


heart heart head

by inkin_brushes



Series: Immortals (Vamp AU) [42]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Biting, Blood Drinking, M/M, Vampire Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-05-27 11:39:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 76,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkin_brushes/pseuds/inkin_brushes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaehwan and Sanghyuk bleed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** there are scenes that are quite graphically bloody and violent, along with scenes depicting drunken sex.

New Years seemed to sneak up on Sanghyuk, even with the interruption of Christmas to mark its coming. Christmas had passed without much event, as he had gone into work, along with the others, making their way through a mountain of paperwork in an attempt at distracting themselves from the fact that none of them could go back to their families.   
  
“It’s okay,” Ilhoon said, handing out turkey sandwiches that he had picked up from somewhere. His voice was aggressively cheerful. “I consider you my family.” And they had laughed because Sungjae had pulled a horrified face, probably at the thought of doing what he does with Ilhoon with his family.   
  
New Years was different. Hakyeon had been dangling the idea of a get-together in front of him since the end of November, bringing it up every time they met. He wanted something to mark the passing of a year in which so much had happened to him, and Sanghyuk appreciated that. He wanted to celebrate too, since so much had also happened in his life this past year.   
  
New Years was always busy for hunters, what with everyone seemingly celebrating living through a year by going out and getting incredibly drunk and possibly not living through the night. He knew that Jaehwan had mentioned once or twice about New Years being a particularly _easy_ night for vampires. He’d felt just a little guilty taking it off, considering, and worried that it wouldn’t be approved, but it had come through, and he’d felt quite cheerful when he’d left the night before, even though Ilhoon had hissed _traitor_ at him as he’d left.   
  
The night sky was clear, which was unusual for the end of December, and the weather sharply cold, Sanghyuk found when he got out of his car on New Year’s Eve. He’d parked a few blocks away from Jaehwan’s house, more out of habit than anything. It was just after eight, and the sun had set a couple hours ago, leaving most of the stores in this area looking decidedly abandoned. There were no bars this side of town, and he passed few people on his walk, all of them with their collars turned up against the cold, their steps hurried, eyes casting about nervously.   
  
Sanghyuk, for his part, felt almost relaxed, breathing in huge lungfuls of the night air. He had his hands in his pockets and he could feel the reassuring weight of his dagger against his hip. His wards were calm, only picking up as he neared the house, tittering at him in a way which felt tired, like they had become resigned to their fate at his point.   
  
His speed picked up as he made his way through the tunnels. He was excited to see Wonshik and Hongbin again, for the first time in a while, and even to see Taekwoon, though there wasn’t much conversation to be had there. Hakyeon had promised to find alcohol from somewhere, and while Sanghyuk hadn’t asked too many questions as to where he would procure that, the whole thing felt like it had the makings of a pretty good night.   
  
Of course, Jaehwan would be there — it was his house, after all — so that might put a damper on things, if he decided to stir up trouble.  
  
Sanghyuk smiled, a slight, sardonic quirk of his lips, as he gave the door a perfunctory knock, and then went inside. Hakyeon, he knew, hadn’t particularly wanted to have Jaehwan at the gathering, but they couldn’t hold it at Sanghyuk’s place for fear his neighbours would notice something was up, and Hakyeon’s place with Taekwoon was just big enough for the two of them; it was highly unlikely they’d ever fit everyone else in. Besides, Sanghyuk had argued, they couldn’t leave Jaehwan out. He’d been part of this past year, for all that Hakyeon wanted to pretend he hadn’t been.   
  
Sanghyuk just hoped he behaved himself.   
  
Nobody came to meet him in the entrance, but he knew they were here, his wards were too agitated for there to be only air, and after he kicked his shoes off and padded into the living room, he found that was because everyone was watching Hakyeon fuss around setting out a plate of chips and an opened bottle of beer. Hongbin was smiling in a way that let Sanghyuk know that this had been going on a while and he was on the verge of laughing.   
  
Wonshik grinned at him, slung out on the couch in a half slump, his head nearly against the armrest. “Hey, kid,” he said.   
  
“Hey,” Sanghyuk said, and even though he couldn’t have missed Sanghyuk coming in, Hakyeon whirled around like he’d only just noticed.   
  
“Sanghyuk,” he said happily, coming over to give him a hug that made Sanghyuk fear for his ribs. “You’re just in time.”   
  
“In time for snacks?” Sanghyuk asked, grabbing a couple of chips and crunching into them cheerfully. “Did you get these just for me?”   
  
“Well, I thought you might need something,” Hakyeon said, looking a little embarrassed. Or as embarrassed as Hakyeon ever got.   
  
Taekwoon came out of the kitchen with a blood bag in his hands which he held out to Hakyeon without a word. Hakyeon took it without really seeming to notice what he was doing, which made Sanghyuk smile. A lot of the time, the lines between married couple and a parent taking care of a child seemed to get blurred between Hakyeon and Taekwoon, but it seemed to be working out for them. Sanghyuk didn’t have any room to judge.   
  
Jaehwan didn’t seem to be around, and Sanghyuk wasn’t disappointed or even all that bothered by that but still. After all the convincing he’d done to get Hakyeon to behave if Jaehwan decided to join them, it would have been amiss for him to not to come out of that grotesque lair he called a bedroom. They were in his house, after all.   
  
Sanghyuk picked up his bottle of beer and folded down into the overstuffed leather armchair, pulling the bowl of chips closer to him since he was going to be the only one eating them. Hakyeon was doing his party host thing that Sanghyuk knew well from when he was human, but as a vampire in a room full of other vampires, there wasn’t really much he could do. Nobody needed a drink refill, since no one was drinking, and nobody needed food, since that had already been taken care of.   
  
Hakyeon sat down eventually in another armchair, Taekwoon taking his usual position of leaning against the arm. Hakyeon gave Sanghyuk a soft, but pleased, smile. “I’m glad you were able to get out of work for tonight.”   
  
“I remember how difficult it was to get New Year’s Eve off work,” Hongbin said, almost wistfully. “Though it wasn’t that many people actually wanted it off.”  
  
“Yeah, if there’s something I’ve learned, getting drunk and partying really loses its shine when you’ve seen what the results of that can be,” Wonshik said.   
  
“It’s not that I’m against partying per se,” Sanghyuk said with a shrug. “It’s just that sometimes it’s nice to— stay in. Have a couple of drinks. You know?”   
  
There was a pause, all of them staring at him in a way that made his wards fizz uncomfortably. Then Wonshik started laughing. “Jeez, Sanghyuk, you’re old before your time.”   
  
Sanghyuk flushed. “I’m not,” he protested. “I party! It’s hard not to, being friends with Ilhoon,” he added, in a mutinous mutter, mostly around the rim of his beer bottle as he lifted it to his mouth.   
  
The others were still laughing at him a little, and he could tell that someone was about to say something at his expense, but they were distracted from that by Jaehwan sauntering into the room, like he wasn’t ridiculously — or, to his mind, fashionably — late. His entrance caused Sanghyuk’s wards to ripple, tipping the scale into _too many vampires in the room_ territory, and Sanghyuk squirmed in discomfort, trying to calm them. It was just Jaehwan after all, dressed in black skinny jeans and a charcoal grey button up shirt, his hair slicked back in that style that Sanghyuk had often taken great pleasure in messing up. He had his laptop tucked under one arm, and the grin he gave Sanghyuk was almost lazy for all that it was predatory.   
  
“Hello, love,” he said, setting his laptop down on the coffee table.  
  
Sanghyuk raised an eyebrow but couldn’t stop his own smile back. “Hey.”   
  
“You’re late,” Wonshik noted. His tone of voice suggested that perhaps he would have been happier if Jaehwan had continued being late until the party was over.   
  
“Hello to you too,” Jaehwan said airily. He motioned to his laptop. “I was preparing.”   
  
Everyone looked at the laptop warily. “Preparing what?” Sanghyuk asked.   
  
“Well, you humans—” Jaehwan waved in Sanghyuk’s direction carelessly — “have a few traditions on New Years, have you not? Beyond the partying that you all do so well. I hear something about a ball dropping.” The way he said it suggested that he knew exactly what that was, and was playing cute. “I thought perhaps we should all like to watch it together.”   
  
“That’s—” Hongbin looked a little lost for words. Sanghyuk knew the feeling. “That’s a really nice idea.”   
  
“I am full of them,” Jaehwan said, preening a little. Sanghyuk snorted a little into his beer, and ignored the glare Jaehwan sent his way.   
  
Even Hakyeon looked grudgingly appreciative and didn’t say anything as Jaehwan walked into the kitchen and came back with a blood bag. He stopped in front of Sanghyuk, looking at him expectantly. Sanghyuk took another sip of his beer and said cheerfully, “Can I help you?”  
  
“You’re in my seat, love,” Jaehwan said, motioning with his hand for Sanghyuk to get up.   
  
Sanghyuk raised an eyebrow. “Am I?” He grinned up at Jaehwan. “Sucks to be you.”   
  
Jaehwan growled at him, which made Wonshik say, a little nervously, “Jaehwan—” But the next second Sanghyuk found his equilibrium shifting, and when he was next aware of himself he found that he was slung over Jaehwan’s lap, back against the arm of the chair, Jaehwan’s arm around his shoulders.   
  
“What the fuck—”  
  
“I told you that you were in my seat,” Jaehwan said, sounding far too smug for Sanghyuk’s liking.   
  
“That didn’t mean you could just move me like that,” Sanghyuk grumbled. He should get up, find a different seat, he knew that; he could sense the others looking at him, the weight of their gazes heavy, making his wards prickle in a sudden, uncomfortable surge, like suddenly there were just too many vampires paying too much attention to him. Jaehwan’s touch only exacerbated that, his stare heavy on Sanghyuk’s skin. Sanghyuk cut his wards off fully, tired of their itching tonight, because he found he didn’t really want to move. Jaehwan was warm, perhaps specially, and it was comfortable to just rest his head to the side against Jaehwan’s shoulder. In the sudden peace of his wards being silenced, it was nice.   
  
Plus, he didn’t think Jaehwan was going to let him go. He hadn’t last time.   
  
When Jaehwan spoke, his mouth was very close, lips just brushing against Sanghyuk’s temple. “Shut up and enjoy it, love.”   
  
Sanghyuk could feel a slight blush over his cheeks but he looked out at the others and rolled his eyes at the ridiculousness of it, and he saw Wonshik at least relax a little bit. Hakyeon looked ready to spit feathers, but Hongbin was clearly on the verge of laughing out loud. He seemed to be like that a lot about Jaehwan, recently.   
  
Jaehwan waved airily at the laptop on the coffee table. “Open it up, Wonshik. I found a live stream of the festivities.”   
  
Wonshik leaned over and opened it up, hitting play on the stream. It was currently some live music show, playing a song that Sanghyuk knew only vaguely, and the others didn’t know at all. Taekwoon got a little crease between his brows, like the music pained him.   
  
The music ended up providing a distraction from the fact that Sanghyuk was sitting in Jaehwan’s lap, and seemed to dissolve some of the tension. Wonshik asked a question about the hunting team Sanghyuk was working with, and Sanghyuk regaled them with a story of Ilhoon’s latest antics that had even Jaehwan deigning to smile.   
  
After that, the conversation splintered off, and Sanghyuk found, when he tried to stand up to get himself another beer, Jaehwan let him go, his hands brushing against Sanghyuk’s hips the only sense of resistance. Jaehwan didn’t move from his spot, apparently content to sit and watch whatever was happening on his screen, and Sanghyuk returned to him time and time again, after talking to one of the others or another.  
  
He found himself sitting in Jaehwan’s lap as midnight drew closer. Hakyeon was murmuring softly to Taekwoon, now perched on the arm of his chair. It was too quiet for Sanghyuk to hear, but judging from the soft sounds of amusement Jaehwan was making, he could. Wonshik and Hongbin were pressed side by side on the couch, Hongbin pretending to ignore the sappy smiles Wonshik kept giving him.  
  
“This is nice,” Sanghyuk murmured to Jaehwan. “We should do this more often.”  
  
“I do not doubt that my presence is tolerated simply because it is a season of goodwill of sorts,” Jaehwan said, drawling slightly. “More often would, I fear, be too much both for them and myself.”   
  
“Well, I like it,” Sanghyuk said stubbornly. The alcohol had given him a nice warm feeling, his instincts just on the edge of being fuzzy. He liked that, too, liked being surrounded by his friends, even if he kept having to shake himself as he realised he was the lone human in a room of vampires.   
  
So much really had changed in the last year, he thought wryly, as the countdown to midnight began on the screen.   
  
They watched it in silence, Sanghyuk mouthing the numbers to himself, and as midnight was announced, he felt fingers against his jaw, turning his head. He went with the movement, surprised all the same when Jaehwan kissed him. It was soft and sweet and Sanghyuk felt it almost to his toes.   
  
“What was that for?” he asked, as Jaehwan pulled away.  
  
“It’s midnight,” Jaehwan said. “Aren’t you supposed to kiss someone at midnight?”   
  
Sanghyuk laughed. “Yeah, but that’s a—” He caught sight of the look in Jaehwan’s eyes, something hungry and hunted and— too much. He faltered, before pushing himself out of Jaehwan’s lap, muttering, “I need another drink.”   
  
He took a moment in the kitchen to think about that look in Jaehwan’s eyes and then pushed it away, pushed it to the back of his mind, the dark corner of things they didn’t talk about. There had been a lot of that, recently. They hadn’t spoken once about when Sanghyuk had been on top. Jaehwan seemed to be pretending like it had never happened, and Sanghyuk couldn’t work out a way to bring it up without sounding put out about how Jaehwan had reacted afterwards. Besides, he’d learned long ago that if Jaehwan didn’t want to talk about something, it was probably best to not push the point.  
  
Still, it was playing on his mind. Jaehwan had shown no indication during that he hadn’t been enjoying it; it had been quite the opposite, in fact. But if he hadn’t liked it, then Sanghyuk almost wanted to apologise for forcing the point, but if Jaehwan didn’t want to talk about it, then how was he supposed to do that?   
  
He sighed and grabbed the bottle opener to open his new beer, tossing it down onto the counter when he was done. Hakyeon was laughing at something Wonshik had said and Hongbin gave Sanghyuk a smile as he went past on his own way back from the kitchen, their shoulders just brushing—  
  
Hongbin grabbed his forearm, hard, too hard, making Sanghyuk cry out and drop the bottle he was holding as he felt the bones in his arm begin to buckle under the strain, the glass shattering on the marble. He was confused, for a horrible flicker, then Hongbin was there, his mouth lowering to Sanghyuk’s arm, and Sanghyuk had the frantic thought _he’s turned_ quickly followed by _he’s going to break my arm_. And that was the stupidest thing to be thinking when he could feel Hongbin’s _fangs on his skin_ —  
  
The next second something rammed into Hongbin’s side, so hard that there was a nauseating crack, and then another as Hongbin slammed into the floor. For a few brief seconds Sanghyuk felt such a sickening wave of pain that he became convinced that his arm had been pulled out its socket, and he sat down heavily on the floor, glass cutting into his palms.  
  
It was Jaehwan, he saw, who was pinning Hongbin to the floor, knees against Hongbin’s shoulders to hold him down. Hongbin was struggling for all that he was worth, but Jaehwan was centuries stronger. Hongbin howled in rage, at his prey being taken away, and also a slight amount of confusion, like he couldn’t work out why he was suddenly on the floor. “Hungry!” he screamed, snapping at Jaehwan.  
  
“Shut _up_ ,” Jaehwan screamed back. He was trembling, Sanghyuk realised, his entire body shaking with— Sanghyuk didn’t know. “Shut up, you crazy piece of shit, I ought to smash your skull into the ground, maybe that would knock some fucking sense into you—”  
  
“Jaehwan,” said Wonshik, helplessly, sounding like he was in as much pain and confusion as Hongbin was.  
  
A touch on Sanghyuk’s shoulder scared him so much that he almost screamed himself, managing to stop himself just before it was too late. It was Hakyeon, his face curiously shuttered.  
  
“Come on,” Hakyeon said softly, gently helping Sanghyuk get back to his feet. “You can’t stay here. It’s not safe.”  
  
Sanghyuk felt more than a little unsteady, but he brushed off Hakyeon’s offer to carry him. He was not a damsel in distress— his shoulder wasn’t dislocated and his arm wasn’t broken, though it hurt enough that it might as well have been. He did take the arm that Hakyeon lent him, his knees shaking as the adrenaline wore off a little. Taekwoon covered their backs, staying just far enough away that he didn’t spook Sanghyuk too much.   
  
Once outside, the harsh street lights made Hakyeon’s face look pallid and worn somehow. He promptly turned and took Sanghyuk in his arms, wrapping him in a hug that was as familiar and warm as a freshly washed pair of pajamas. Sanghyuk leaned into it, feeling much better for it.   
  
“Are you alright?” Hakyeon asked, and Sanghyuk nodded mutely. He thought he was, just shaken. Hakyeon kept patting Sanghyuk’s back, but addressed Taekwoon over Sanghyuk’s shoulder. “I thought— he was fine tonight, he didn’t wake up like that, I didn’t think—”  
  
It took Taekwoon a short while to answer, although maybe he made some gesture that Sanghyuk couldn’t see, since he was facing away. “There is always the risk. His hunger is not a normal thing. Sometimes— there may be complications, reasons. They don’t matter.” Something tightened in his voice. “I should have been more prepared.”  
  
“Oh, hush,” Hakyeon said, which made Sanghyuk smile despite himself. “You can’t blame yourself for not knowing— and besides which, we’re all safe, aren’t we? He didn’t— didn’t hurt Sanghyuk, did he—”  
  
There was a growling noise from behind Sanghyuk, and he cringed into Hakyeon, not wanting to look and see what it was this time. But there was no answering snarl from Taekwoon, nor any sense of movement, and Sanghyuk wasn’t all that surprised when he was yanked away from Hakyeon’s body and pulled against Jaehwan’s.  
  
He could have struggled. The comfort that Jaehwan could offer him wasn’t the same as Hakyeon’s, not as familiar, not as comfortable. But Jaehwan’s body was warm, brought to almost fever thanks to his anger, and it was a nice foil to the cold night air around them. Sanghyuk was only in a sweater now, having left his coat down in Jaehwan’s house in his haste to get out. Jaehwan wrapped one arm around Sanghyuk’s waist, yanking him as close as he could get, and slid the other into Sanghyuk’s hair. He murmured something into Sanghyuk’s hair, something that Sanghyuk couldn’t quite make out, but he recognised the tone — it was the same one Taekwoon had used when he had blamed himself.  
  
Sanghyuk wrenched himself out of Jaehwan’s arms. Jaehwan stared at him, hands taking a couple of seconds to drop down to his side. “Don’t you go blaming yourself too,” Sanghyuk said, exasperated. “Do you all have some sort of hero’s complex?”  
  
“It’s not that,” Jaehwan said. There was something gravely in his voice that set Sanghyuk on edge even more. “But we— I, _I_ should have known. I live with Crazy, I know his moods, his patterns. I should have guessed what would happen—”  
  
“Well, you didn’t,” Sanghyuk said bluntly. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, because he didn’t hurt me in the end—”  
  
Jaehwan moved faster than Sanghyuk could react to, seizing his hand with its bloody palm and pulling the sleeve of his sweater up. Hongbin had grabbed him with such force that there were already bruises forming. His arm was swollen and the marks were settling into a lurid handprint that stretched all the way up Sanghyuk’s forearm.  
  
When he saw the marks, Jaehwan made a noise that Sanghyuk didn’t think him capable of making, a lost, broken whimper that settled into a hiss as he apparently decided to be angry. “Does this look unhurt?” he asked harshly. “He could have seriously— seriously hurt you, Sanghyuk, don’t—”  
  
“But he didn’t. Hurt me, I mean.” Sanghyuk looked around at Hakyeon and Taekwoon helplessly, unable to figure out how to deal with this strange new Jaehwan. “I don’t understand why you’re so angry. It’s not my fault.”  
  
Jaehwan took a step back and then let his hand go, Sanghyuk’s arm falling back to his side. When Jaehwan laughed, it was an odd bitter sound. “No,” he said, almost like he was confirming something, “you wouldn’t understand. God, this is fucked up. I’m so fucked up.”  
  
“I wish you wouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Sanghyuk said softly.   
  
Jaehwan laughed again. Then he ducked his head and kissed Sanghyuk roughly, the kind of kiss that Sanghyuk couldn’t help but fall into it, and afterwards left him red-faced and squirming when he realised afterwards that Hakyeon and Taekwoon had seen it. Taekwoon may as well have been made of stone, but Hakyeon’s face was caught between something like revulsion and pity.   
  
“Go home, Sanghyuk,” Jaehwan said, murmuring against his lips. “Don’t come around for a while. It’s not going to be safe here for a bit. I’ll let you know when it is. Just— don’t risk it until I say. Please. I don’t— don’t want you to be hurt.”  
  
Sanghyuk blinked. Jaehwan so rarely expressed any concern for his safety that it always left Sanghyuk confused, and there had been something raw in his voice that made Sanghyuk whisper a mere, “Okay,” in response.   
  
“Okay,” Jaehwan echoed. “I—” Then he choked himself off, standing straight upright, looking over at Hakyeon and Taekwoon. “I have to hunt for Crazy, now. Make sure my human gets home safely, Taekwoon.”  
  
“I am not _your_ human,” Sanghyuk said, kicking out at Jaehwan’s shins, but Jaehwan was already gone, without any sign that he’d ever been there. Sanghyuk felt a strange pang at his disappearance, that had nothing to do with the lack of warmth on his skin, and covered it by kicking a stone in the direction he’d thought Jaehwan had gone in. “Asshole,” he muttered.   
  
——  
  
By this stage, Sanghyuk knew how the game was played. He had dealt with it after Hakyeon went vamp, and he knew it from the last time Hongbin had turned around them, months and months ago. It didn’t mean that he was particularly happy with what was going on, but he knew that the others needed a chance to get their heads around what had happened, and that he’d simply have to wait it out.   
  
In the sudden spare time available to him, he made his apartment feel like his own place again, going grocery shopping for the first time in who knew how long to get just the basics, bread, milk, cereal, all of which had been either missing or out of date. He watched movies and caught up on his shows and tried to clean the mould in his grouting for once. He figured Jaehwan would be happy with that.   
  
The days slipped by between work and his newfound sense of productivity, and before he knew it, a week had passed, and his patience was starting to stretch somewhat thin. They had gotten a scare, that much was true, but Hongbin’s shifts were unpredictable to say the least. Keeping Sanghyuk away didn’t make it more or less likely that what had happened wouldn’t happen again.  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t plan on being in such a vulnerable position if there was next time. He refused to be paranoid about the time he spent with his friends, but he knew that it had been a mistake to leave himself as defenceless as he had done. He shouldn’t have powered down his wards, that had been foolish, and it wasn’t a mistake that he’d make again. But they would have kicked in, once he’d had the brains to fire them back up, and he would have been fine even had Jaehwan not intervened. He was a hunter and this was in his blood. Wonshik and the others should know that by now.   
  
Although, Sanghyuk knew Hakyeon, and he was probably worried that the same thing might happen with him, that he might attack Sanghyuk without realising what he was doing too. It was unlikely enough to be impossible, as far as Sanghyuk was concerned, but he knew what Hakyeon was like. For someone who had been somewhat reckless in the field, he was exceedingly careful outside of it. And particularly when it came to Sanghyuk.   
  
“Not that I’m complaining,” Sungjae said, perched on the edge of Sanghyuk’s desk as Sanghyuk filled out paperwork, “since it means I don’t have to do all the work myself, but why are you here?”  
  
Sanghyuk looked up at him, blinking in confusion. “Uh. I’m working.”   
  
Sungjae sighed, like Sanghyuk was very stupid. Which was rich, coming from him. “Yeah, just like you have done every night so far this week. You’re due a day off but instead you’re here, stabbing away at your paperwork so hard you’re going to put a hole in it.”   
  
Sanghyuk looked down at the paper in front of him. He had been filing a report about the fishing trip that they’d done the night before — three hours spent trawling the local bars and clubs and not a single bite. It was frustrating and had left Sanghyuk pumped full of nervous energy, with no outlet for it, energy he still felt full of tonight. Now that Sungjae had mentioned it, he could see a number of places where his pen had almost punched right through the paper.  
  
He slumped down in his seat, exhaling one long breath, trying to loosen the tenseness in his shoulders. He stared at the paperwork, and then, as Sungjae squeezed his shoulder, he looked up and said, “Can you cover the rest of my shift?”   
  
Sungjae rolled his eyes and sighed like he was asking far too much. “I suppose I could do that. I’m such a good friend, willing to fuck myself over so you can enjoy yourself. See what a great friend I am? You owe me like, a blow job or something.”   
  
Sanghyuk smiled, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Or something.”  
  
“Go home,” Sungjae said, waving his hand at him in a shooing motion. Sanghyuk stood up, laughing, nodding his head like he was planning on going home. He already knew he wasn’t.   
  
An hour later he was walking quickly down the street that lead to the alley to Jaehwan’s house, ducking in before anyone could see him, although that was unlikely considering the time of night it was. He wasn’t sure what exactly he planned on doing or saying, just that he wanted to press the point, show how fine he was. Even the bruises had faded to almost nothing by this point, faint greenish yellow tinges on his skin.  
  
He knelt down beside the grate to lift it up and as he put his hands out he felt something spark, just lightly enough that he might have missed it if his senses weren’t hunter sharp. He frowned but nothing else happened, so he tugged at the grate to lift it up.  
  
It refused to come. He tugged harder, wondering if maybe it was just stuck on something before he realised that no, that had never happened, that probably couldn’t happen. It was—  
  
Jaehwan had locked him out.   
  
Sanghyuk reeled backwards, almost losing his balance. He stared at the grate, one of his hands still touching it even though he could see how hard it was shaking. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, shock and anger closing up his throat just long enough that he ended up gasping like a man drowning.   
  
He shot to his feet, just about resisting the urge to punch the wall next to him. He would just end up hurting himself. But this was— this, he hadn’t expected. He hadn’t expected to be physically locked out, to have that decision taken out of his hands so completely. He hadn’t thought any of them would do this to him.   
  
Sanghyuk stared down at the grate in silent outrage, for a few moments, trying to control his anger and then stiffly left the alleyway. The walk back to his car didn’t do anything to dissipate his anger and when he opened up his phone to text Hakyeon and Wonshik in the group message they had, he had to enter his code three times before he managed to unlock it.   
  
_When can we meet up?_ he fired off, and then spent five minutes staring at the phone, jittering his leg in impatience. When the response came through from Hakyeon, it was vague, noncommittal. Sanghyuk growled at it.   
  
_Maybe we should give it some more time_ , Wonshik sent back, almost immediately afterwards, which made Sanghyuk think he was with Hakyeon. That just pissed him off more.   
  
_I wasn’t asking if we could_ , Sanghyuk sent back, not caring how rude and blunt he sounded. _When?_  
  
 _When is your next night off?_ Hakyeon asked, and Sanghyuk didn’t think he was imagining the note of resignation in his words.   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan pressed his face into the couch cushion, wishing vaguely that he still breathed so that he could suffocate himself with it. He was glad that Wonshik and Hongbin were gone so that they were missing out on this.   
  
He had felt Sanghyuk arrive, even though Jaehwan had told him to stay away. Jaehwan had known that he would come, knew that Sanghyuk was too stubborn and wouldn’t _listen_. He had sensed Sanghyuk coming, felt the wards rebuff him, and had been able to imagine all too well the look on Sanghyuk’s face as he realised what that meant.   
  
He wasn’t guilty about locking Sanghyuk out, he told himself. It wasn’t safe, after all, for Sanghyuk to just come over without warning. One day he was going to sneak in and Hongbin would already be turned and Jaehwan wasn’t going to be there to help him out.   
  
Even the thought of that made him angry, and more scared than he ever wanted to be.   
  
He had told Sanghyuk to stay away to keep him safe, yes, but it had also been to protect himself. Watching Hongbin attack Sanghyuk had sent Jaehwan into a terror, and he had moved before he even really knew what he was doing. He knew now how Taekwoon had felt when Hakyeon had been threatened, but unlike Taekwoon, in that moment Jaehwan had known it was Hongbin, hadn’t simply reacted the only way he knew how. He had known it was Hongbin and he had wanted to hurt him anyway, wanted to break him and bloody him until he couldn’t even think of hurting Sanghyuk again.   
  
Jaehwan wasn’t a nice person, and he was proud of not being a nice person, but he didn’t want to hurt people, not like that, not on purpose. Those feelings had left him rather shaken.   
  
And the thought of Sanghyuk hurt, harmed in any way, had shaken him even more. He knew that he was in too deep, had known that for weeks even when he had been unable to admit it even to himself. But after this it— it was too much.   
  
It would be best, he thought, if Sanghyuk stayed away. Best for both of them, though he didn’t pretend like he wasn’t getting the better deal out of this. He needed distance, from whatever they had become. He couldn’t give himself to Sanghyuk anymore than he already had accidentally done. He needed to gain that emotional distance that he had thought would be easy to maintain.   
  
Only then could he see Sanghyuk.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk imagined that the water cooler in the corner of the room had been put there for reasons other than making them all feel like they worked in a legitimate office environment, but considering nobody ever seemed to really use it, he wasn’t sure what the actual purpose of it was. In normal workplaces, it was probably a regulation thing, but they weren’t exactly big on regulations like that down here.   
  
As far as Sanghyuk would tell, Ilhoon was the only one made use of it with any sort of regularity, probably because he had realised long ago that it was in a nice secluded area that was perfect for gossiping. By this stage, everyone knew that if Ilhoon was dragging you over to help him “get water for everyone”, he had something to talk to you about, and it was probably something you didn’t want to talk about.   
  
“Nobody even needs any water,” Sanghyuk whined as he traipsed after Ilhoon, the unlucky one chosen to help this time.   
  
Ilhoon gave him a decidedly unimpressed look. “You know that’s not why you’re here,” he said. He leaned over to fish some plastic cups from somewhere, since no one actually replaced them in the holder on the machine itself. Sanghyuk tried to not look at his ass and then figured that Ilhoon probably wanted him to. “You’re here to tell me why you’re in such a piss-poor mood.”   
  
“I’m not— you know, it’s not _that_ bad—”  
  
“Sanghyuk, you’ve spent every day this past week and a half looking like someone pissed in your morning cereal. I’m not imagining it, and neither are the others. Now are you going to tell me what’s up, or do I have to get Sungjae to annoy it out of you?”  
  
“You play dirty,” Sanghyuk muttered. He ran a hand through his hair, stalling for time. He knew that it would have been too much to ask for Ilhoon to have missed his bad mood, but he’d hoped that Ilhoon would’ve been discreet enough to not confront him about it so bluntly. Which, now that he thought about it, had been a completely stupid thing to hope.   
  
Ilhoon was looking at him expectantly, knowing that Sanghyuk would break. Sanghyuk didn’t know how to explain this to him. The truth was that he was still furious about everything that had happened with Jaehwan, and the others, who he was set to meet up with on his next night off. Jaehwan, he had heard absolutely nothing from. And Sanghyuk wasn’t an idiot, no matter how much Jaehwan wanted to believe him to be. He knew Jaehwan would have known he had been around and tried to get in and been unable to do so. Jaehwan had to know how angry Sanghyuk would be, about being locked out, and the reasons behind it.  
  
This continued radio silence was, as far as Sanghyuk was concerned, just Jaehwan being a coward.   
  
“It’s my—” He broke off, waving his hands around in circular motions, trying to find the right words. “You know.”  
  
“Fuck buddy,” Ilhoon supplied helpfully. He pushed two cups of water into Sanghyuk’s hands.   
  
“Right. He said that we needed to take a break, that he needed some space. I thought that would be okay, but he hasn’t been communicating with me at all. He’s just cut me out.” He could feel himself blushing, knew how much it sounded like he’d been ditched.   
  
Ilhoon straightened, frowning. He had two cups in his own hands and they came dangerously close to spilling their contents as he started back to their desks. “Cut you off, more like,” he said, weaving through the tables. “You know what the solution is, don’t you?”  
  
“No, but I figure you’re going to tell me anyway,” Sanghyuk said, putting one of his cups on Sungjae’s desk.   
  
“Go out and fuck someone else,” Ilhoon said. “There are hundreds of guys out there who would give their right arm to fuck you, Sanghyuk. Find one and hopefully it’ll stop you being such a moody bastard.”   
  
“I volunteer as tribute,” Sungjae said, lounging across Hyunsik’s desk in a way that he probably hoped was seductive, but was actually just messing up Hyunsik’s paperwork.   
  
“This is why I don’t sleep with you anymore,” Sanghyuk said, his tone flat. Sungjae pouted theatrically.  
  
“It doesn’t have to be one of us, or even someone at work,” Ilhoon said. “Haven’t you ever thought about just going to a club and finding someone?”  
  
Sanghyuk blinked at him. “What, you mean like a stranger?”   
  
Ilhoon was definitely laughing at the ill-disguised shock in his voice but kindly didn’t say anything. “Yeah, a stranger. It wouldn’t be hard, with all this going on.” He waved his hand up and down Sanghyuk’s body and grinned at him.   
  
Sanghyuk chewed his lip, considering. Tomorrow night he had off, but he was using it to meet with Hakyeon and the others. But the next night he had free, could he really just— go to a club and find someone to take home with him?   
  
“Maybe,” he said aloud, as Hyunsik finally shoved Sungjae off the desk in a flurry of papers.  
  
——  
  
Parks were fucking creepy at night, Sanghyuk decided. He always associated parks with his childhood, and so whenever there weren’t any children in said parks he couldn’t help but feel on edge. One of the swings was even swaying gently in the breeze.   
  
He shivered and pulled his coat in tighter around himself. It was only early January, and still freezing cold outside, and he had been waiting for the past ten minutes with nothing to do. He had taken precautions with a scarf and gloves and a dumb looking hat which he hated, but it wasn’t doing much to keep out the cold.   
  
“They live this close and they’re this late?” he muttered, stomping his feet to try to bring back some semblance of feeling into them. Then there came a prickle on his wards, and he tensed, hand falling to his side, even though he suspected—  
  
“Sorry, kiddo,” came a voice from somewhere behind him, and Sanghyuk spun to see Wonshik and Hongbin slinking out of the shadows, doing that vampire thing where they were there one second where they hadn’t been previous. Wonshik gave a sheepish grin. “We didn’t mean to be late, we got caught up.”  
  
Sanghyuk grumbled, hunching into his scarf. Hongbin was wearing a soft looking sweater but Wonshik was just wearing a t-shirt and it made Sanghyuk’s extremities ache just looking at him. “It’s cold,” he said. “You made me wait.”   
  
“Is it cold?” a voice said, Sanghyuk turned to his side and saw Hakyeon and Taekwoon walking towards him, normal human speed, not sneaking up on him. Despite that, his wards gave prickling pulse of energy through him, but he now knew better than to power them down, no matter how annoying they were. Hakyeon had on his leather jacket and, oddly, a scarf wrapped around his own neck. “I never would have guessed.”  
  
“It _is_ cold,” Taekwoon said softly.   
  
“Yeah, and I’m a vampire,” Hakyeon said, rolling his eyes. “I’m hardly going to get sick again, am I?”  
  
Taekwoon didn’t say anything. Hakyeon unwound the scarf from his neck and slung it over Sanghyuk’s neck. It was warm, adding an extra layer of heat. Then Hakyeon took his hands, body temperature knocked up enough that Sanghyuk could feel the heat radiating off him. His hands were warmed up in seconds.   
  
“Thanks,” he said, a residual shiver in his voice, putting his anger on hold to enjoy the warmth.   
  
“You’re frozen solid,” Hakyeon said, pulling him into a hug. “Come here, let me warm you up.”  
  
Sanghyuk submitted to the hug for a couple seconds before pulling away. He was beginning to think that no matter what life-changing event they all went through, Hakyeon would probably never stop fussing over him like he was a child. He really didn’t feel like it tonight.  
  
“We should have met him indoors,” Hakyeon was grumbling to Taekwoon.   
  
“Well, not at our place,” Wonshik said. “Being around Jaehwan right now is like living with a toddler going through their terrible twos.”   
  
That brought the anger surging forth. “Plus,” Sanghyuk said through gritted teeth, stepping back further out of the semi-circle they had made, “I can’t get into your house anymore, remember?”   
  
Wonshik and Hongbin exchanged looks. “What are you talking about?” Wonshik asked.  
  
“I tried to go and see Jaehwan, but I couldn’t get through the grate. He’s locked me out of the wards, didn’t you know?”  
  
Wonshik looked horrified, and it answered Sanghyuk’s question. “Christ, Sanghyuk, no, I didn’t know he’d done that.” He looked to Hongbin, who shook his head. Taekwoon was frowning, just slightly.  
  
“Oh,” Sanghyuk said, feeling his shoulders slump a bit as his righteous indignation drained away. His indignation at these particular vampires, anyway. He was still going to hold Jaehwan accountable for this _bullshit_. “I— sorry. I should have figured it was just Jaehwan being a bastard for one godforsaken reason or another.”  
  
“Jaehwan’s dealing with some things right now,” Hongbin said with a wince, voice a little strained.   
  
“Things?” Sanghyuk asked skeptically. “What sort of things?”  
  
A pause. “Emotional things,” Hongbin said eventually.  
  
Sanghyuk snorted. “Jaehwan doesn’t have emotions, he told me so himself.” He paused. “I’m pretty pissed off with him right now, to be honest, especially now that I know he just went over all our heads. I don’t like it when I get locked out of things, either figuratively or literally.” He gave them all a significant look. Hakyeon had the grace at least to squirm.   
  
“That is why we are here,” Taekwoon murmured, his voice carrying over them all even though he spoke remarkably quietly. Sanghyuk had to learn that trick somehow. Maybe it was a vampire thing.  
  
Oh?” Sanghyuk walked to a bench and sat down on it. The bench was cold and a little damp, which was somewhat uncomfortable. “I thought you were all here because I called you out.”  
  
Hakyeon sat down next to him but didn’t seem to feel the same discomfort. “Well, we had things we wanted to discuss with you too, you know,” Hakyeon said.  
  
“I wanted to apologise,” Hongbin said, and Sanghyuk shifted so he could look at him. He was tucked into Wonshik’s side, his eyes on Sanghyuk. “For— what I did. I heard that you weren’t badly hurt but I feel so guilty.”   
  
“I wasn’t hurt at all,” Sanghyuk said, knowing it was a slight lie. “Just some bruising, which faded after a few days. You don’t have to feel bad about it, Hongbin. It’s not your fault. I know that when you’re like that, you’re not really you.”   
  
“I am still me,” Hongbin said. “I’m not in control of myself but I still know vaguely what’s going on around me. I wanted to hurt you, Sanghyuk. And that’s— that’s why we didn’t contact you. It rattled me.”  
  
Sanghyuk thought for a moment, eyes flicking between Hongbin, Wonshik, and Hakyeon. “I know,” he said eventually, slowly, “I knew that’s why you were waiting so long. You’re scared, all of you, of what you could do to me. Hongbin could hurt me when he turns, but Hakyeon could hurt me too, he’s still a young vampire. It could happen.”  
  
“It could,” Hakyeon murmured, looking like it killed him to admit it.   
  
“But you’re all doing it again.” Sanghyuk stood up again, taking a few arrested steps forward and then stopping. “It’s— you’re making decisions for me, all of you, you’re all doing it now. Not just Jaehwan. You don’t think I can look after myself.”  
  
“That’s not it,” Hakyeon protested. “Sanghyuk, we know you can protect yourself. But this is— it’s different.”  
  
“Well, if you’re not protecting me, then you’re protecting yourselves,” Sanghyuk said bluntly. “You’re all worried that you’re going to hurt me, but— I won’t let that happen. When Hongbin attacked me, I was protected by my wards long before Jaehwan got there. I’d shut them down because they’d been giving me trouble, with so many vamps in the room, but they would have kicked in a few seconds later, once my brain caught up. And that is not a mistake I am going to repeat. I know you guys don’t want to hurt me, so you remove me from the situation. But that’s not fair.”  
  
“It’s not about _fair_ —” Hakyeon began.  
  
“Yes, it is. It’s about respecting me as a hunter, as someone who can make his own decisions. If I want to see you guys, then I should be able to. Let me deal with putting myself in a lair of vampires. It’s not like I don’t already know the dangers.”   
  
“He’s right,” said Hongbin with a heavy sigh. Wonshik and Hakyeon both looked at him, betrayed. “Well, he is. We may not like it, but he knows the dangers, we don’t have the right to make his choices for him. He’s a hunter, just like we were.”  
  
“I’m not denying that,” Hakyeon said, agitated. Even agitation looked smooth on him now, oily. It was hard to imagine him baking to deal with his stress with the way he moved now. “Sanghyuk is a damn good hunter, we all know that—”  
  
“What did you say?” Sanghyuk asked, a smile breaking across his face. “You think I’m a good hunter?”  
  
Hakyeon gave him a cool, unimpressed look. “Yes, of course you are, now stop trying to get off subject.”   
  
“You’ve never said I was a good hunter before.”  
  
“Yes, I have. Lots of times. In fact I distinctly remember telling you so after your first kill.”  
  
“Double kill.”   
  
Hakyeon rolled his eyes again. “Yes, your double kill. And anyway, it’s not about being a good hunter or not. Walking into a room of vampires, even ones that don’t want to kill you, is a lot different to all that hunting entails.”   
  
“So, what, I’m supposed to just not see you guys—”  
  
“No, Sanghyuk, would you let me finish?” Hakyeon stood too, getting to his feet in an oily movement that sent Sanghyuk’s tats jangling. “We’re not here to tell you to stay away, or that we don’t think you can look after yourself. You’ve proven you can, many many times. It’s not that. We wanted to tell you that this time, it was about us.”   
  
“About you?”   
  
“It’s— scary,” Hongbin murmured. “To fall into that state and not be able to control yourself, to be so overtaken by bloodlust that you forget even the people you love. When I’m in that state, Sanghyuk, I respond to Wonshik but I barely recognise him. If he’d been human, I would have destroyed him too. I don’t like it, I don’t like thinking that maybe I could hurt someone. Especially someone I care about as much as you.”   
  
“And I’m unstable still,” Hakyeon said. “I have it under control but I still feel it. I can feel the blood in your veins, Sanghyuk, like it’s singing to me, and there’s a part of me that wants it. You can’t understand how that feels. I love you, Sanghyuk, but sometimes I just think— what if I lost control too?”   
  
“If that happened,” Sanghyuk said bluntly, “then I would protect myself.”   
  
There was a long silence, Hakyeon looking at Sanghyuk intently, trying to draw something out of his face that Sanghyuk wasn’t sure of. After a while, Hakyeon gave a weak smile. “You wouldn’t even hesitate, would you?”   
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t. I know that none of you want to hurt me, and you’d all be devastated if anything happened to me. So yes, if you attacked me, then I’d defend myself any way I knew how, because I’d rather that, than you coming to and realising you had hurt me, or worse.”   
  
“We don’t deserve you, kiddo,” Wonshik said.   
  
“No,” Sanghyuk agreed cheerfully. “You don’t.”   
  
“We didn’t mean to— to lock you out, as you said.”  
  
“I know that, but that’s what happened. All I want is for you guys to keep me in the loop. If you need a break from being around a human for a while, then that’s fine, I don’t mind that. But I don’t like not knowing what’s going on, especially since everyone else was on the same page. I deserve to be in the know too.”   
  
Hakyeon flitted up to him, and Sanghyuk only just managed to wrangle in his wards in time so he didn’t zap Hakyeon when he wrapped Sanghyuk up into another hug. Sanghyuk huffed out an exasperated breath and glared at Wonshik who was snickering at him. “Wonshik’s right,” Hakyeon said, his voice thick. “We really don’t deserve you.”  
  
“Oh, gross, don’t get blood on me,” Sanghyuk said, but he didn’t push Hakyeon away.   
  
—-  
  
“Did you take my advice yet?” Ilhoon asked, the eyeliner pencil in his hands coming dangerously close to Sanghyuk’s eye as he spoke.   
  
Sanghyuk didn’t even have to think about what advice he meant, even though it had been a week since they’d spoken about it. “No.”  
  
Ilhoon sighed and took a step back to give Sanghyuk the kind of look he usually reserved for Sungjae’s particularly stupid comments.   
  
“I’m just waiting,” Sanghyuk said. “Just a little bit, just to see.”  
  
He wasn’t going to admit to Ilhoon that part of him was still hoping that Jaehwan would get over whatever issues Hongbin had mentioned him having, and come to apologise. With each passing day it felt like that was becoming more and more of a fantasy.   
  
“Mmm,” Ilhoon said, throwing the eyeliner to the side. “You’re done.”  
  
Sanghyuk got to his feet, straightening the shirt he was wearing. He had somehow managed to pour himself into a pair of jeans that were a size too small, the kind of thing he kept around especially for nights he was playing the bait, and judging by the way Ilhoon’s eyes went to his ass when he bent to pick his leather jacket up, they looked pretty good.   
  
He should go over to Jaehwan’s one night wearing these—  
  
He caught himself with a bitter laugh that he couldn’t hold in, and shook his head when Ilhoon gave him a curious look. As much as he hated to admit it, the problem wasn’t that he didn’t want to have sex. He just didn’t want to sleep with someone out of spite, or to prove he could. He wanted to sleep with someone because he wanted it.  
  
And right now, he only really wanted Jaehwan.


	2. Chapter 2

HQ was never exactly warm, but it had been heated enough that the coldness outside hit Sanghyuk like a slap in the face. He shivered, pulling his jacket in around him, snuggling down further into his scarf. He was glad that he’d been on paperwork duty tonight, as hunting in this cold might have caused him to lose some fingers to frostbite. His apartment was no doubt going to be freezing when he got back, missing the presence of a body in it to warm it.   
  
Usually on a night like this, he would get in his car and go to see Jaehwan, let him warm him through thoroughly. But that was no longer on the cards, and he was trying so fucking hard to not be bitter about it, but after over a month of radio silence, he was reaching the end of his tether.   
  
It was still dark out, that absolute darkness that was so characteristic of nights in the dead of winter. The only lights were the streetlights, not as bright as he would have liked. He had his dagger by his side, but he kept to the light as best as he could anyway. Winter was always harder, the long nights dragged on and on and gave the vampires more time to hunt. Sometimes they got cocky, with so much time on their hands.   
  
Sanghyuk was a few blocks from his apartment when he felt the first prickle on his wards. He tensed but kept walking at the same fast pace, his hand dropping to his side where he could grab his weapon as quickly as possible. He was tired of being caught off guard.   
  
The feeling got stronger, but not enough to do anything more than make his wards fizz in agitation. The vampire was stalking him, following him through the streets, but not coming close enough to actually attack. He was confused for a minute or so until he was struck by an overwhelming feeling of deja vu and he sighed.  
  
“Jaehwan,” he called, stopping dead and spinning in a slow circle, trying to work out which direction the feeling was coming from, but he couldn’t figure it out, the vampire wasn’t close enough. “Jaehwan, I know it’s you.”   
  
There was no answer. The feeling neither grew stronger nor weaker, like the vampire had stopped when he had, waiting for him to move. He’d paused just outside the light of a streetlamp and he stepped smartly into the circle of light, just in case. He knew it was Jaehwan, was certain it was Jaehwan, but he wasn’t going to take any chances anymore.   
  
He sighed again. “Jaehwan, come on, this isn’t funny. I’m tired and I want to go home. I’m also really angry with you and I don’t have the patience for your stupid games.”   
  
He half expected Jaehwan to rush him then, for him to feel arms wrap around his waist and pull him flush against a body, but nothing happened. His wards continued to ping uncomfortably at him. The street remained deserted, still and silent. There wasn’t a flicker of movement from anywhere. A streetlamp a few down flickered but ultimately stayed on.   
  
The hairs on the back of Sanghyuk’s neck began to stand on end.  
  
He’d had enough. “Fine,” he spat. “Fine, I don’t know what your problem is but I’m going home, I don’t want to deal with you.” He was scared, or at least unnerved, and he didn’t appreciate it. He wasn’t going to hang around and be toyed with, get sucked into some sort of mental game.   
  
He practically stormed the rest of the way home. The entire way he expected Jaehwan to come at him, to slink out of the shadows and reveal himself, holding back until Sanghyuk was most likely to be scared by it. But he didn’t. The feeling of vampire didn’t fade, and it didn’t get stronger, just stayed constant the entire way, like Jaehwan was keeping a careful distance. Just near enough to feel, but not near enough to do anything about.   
  
It was a relief to get into his apartment. He almost fumbled the key in the door, his hands were shaking so hard by that point. He was still unnerved, but mostly he was just annoyed. It wasn’t fair for Jaehwan to tell him to stay away, to literally lock him out, and to not come around for _weeks_ , and then to top it off by following him around like Sanghyuk had asked him not to fucking do.   
  
He slammed the door to the apartment shut behind him, and felt his tattoos settle as he was cocooned inside the protection of his apartment’s wards. Jaehwan could, obviously, come in, but he never did so uninvited if Sanghyuk was home, and Sanghyuk rather thought he wouldn’t do so now.   
  
He peeled his coat off, draping it over a chair in his kitchen, tossing his scarf across the top of it. He rooted around in his cupboards and managed to find a sachet of cocoa mix tucked away in a corner. He set about boiling some milk, and while he waited, he walked into his bedroom, and turned on the light, and waited a minute.  
  
There was nothing. No tap, no knock. Nothing. And Sanghyuk decided he was tired of this. Tired of waiting. It was time to stop.  
  
He tugged his jeans off, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and went to make his cocoa.   
  
——  
  
The music in the nightclub was far too loud. The pounding of the bassline was making Sanghyuk’s head pound too, just on the painful side of uncomfortable. He didn’t really like these sorts of clubs, where the music was too loud, and the alcohol and drugs flowed a little too fast, too fast to keep the people who stumbled outside safe. But he wasn’t on the clock, and it was cheap, at least. If he was going to get drunk, then this sort of place was his best bet.   
  
He’d called into work today, taken the night off. He had put in enough hours recently to cover missing one shift, and when he had messaged Sungjae to let him know, Sungjae had seemed almost relieved.   
  
Ilhoon had texted him too, a playful _Heading to a club?_ and Sanghyuk had pointedly ignored him.   
  
Following Ilhoon’s advice really wasn’t as easy as Ilhoon had made out. Sanghyuk had dressed himself as best as he could without feeling like he was going on a fishing trip, less eyeliner and pleather, more just looking like himself. He’d already had a couple of drinks in an attempt at calming his nerves.   
  
He was finding that wasn’t really working.   
  
He watched, tapping his fingers against the table, as a young girl at a table next to him finally caved to the pressure of her friends around her and reluctantly downed two pills they passed her with her drink. She didn’t even look old enough to be in this club, but the owners of most clubs were remarkably lax when it came to the age of their clientele. Most sensible people didn’t do this, so they had to accept the money from whoever came calling.   
  
He didn’t know what the girl had taken, but he hoped her friends kept an eye out on her after all that. Alcohol made you enough of a target for vampires, but drugs made everything so much worse. The people who took them recreationally tended to be young kids like this, convinced of their own invincibility.   
  
It was none of his business, though, really. He wasn’t on duty tonight and if some idiots wanted to get themselves killed, then he couldn’t really interfere in that. If not tonight, some other night, more likely.   
  
He turned his attention away from the potentially unfortunate girl and scanned the dance floor. How did people do this? Ilhoon, no doubt, would be more than willing to give him some advice on that front, but Sanghyuk had gotten out of owing him for his “help” with Sungjae; he didn’t want to be in Ilhoon’s debt anymore than he already was. Lord only knew what he’d ask for in return.  
  
Someone slid into the booth next to him. Sanghyuk flicked a glance to him, mostly annoyance. It was a young man, possibly his age, probably older. He had dark hair, with a hint of stubble around his jaw, his gaze mostly focused and clear. He was holding two bottles of beer, one of which he slid along to Sanghyuk. “I noticed your drink was running low.”  
  
It had been. Sanghyuk took the drink, fiddling with the label. The guy was attractive, slim but with wider shoulders than Sanghyuk. “Thanks,” he said, a little unsure.   
  
“No problem,” said the guy cheerfully. “I’m Changhyun.”  
  
“Sanghyuk.”  
  
“No offence, but you look like you’re bored out of your fucking mind.”  
  
Sanghyuk laughed, feeling some of his tension bleeding out of him. “I am. Or, at least, I was. Hard to be bored when a good looking guy buys you a drink.” That was such a line, and Sanghyuk knew Ilhoon would be proud, even though Sanghyuk felt a little silly saying it.  
  
Sanghyuk was gratified when Changhyun grinned. “Well, see, that’s what I was wondering. A _damn_ good looking guy like you surely couldn’t have been here by yourself, and if you were, then I needed to change that. It’s practically a crime.”   
  
Sanghyuk took a swig from his beer bottle so he could mask the pleased smile that threatened to bloom on his face. He knew that he must have something appealing about him for Jaehwan to stay so interested, and Sungjae had wanted him but Sungjae was Sungjae, and it was always nice to have someone else compliment him. He wasn’t really used to it, yet, wasn’t immune to the flattery.  
  
“Well, I am,” Sanghyuk said, setting his beer bottle down on the table. “Here by myself, I mean.”  
  
“Well, now you’re not,” Changhyun said, “are you?”  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, the corner of his lips twitching. “I’m not.”   
  
Changhyun, it turned out over the course of the conversation, was a college student, studying political science. Sanghyuk didn’t know anything about politics beyond knowing that most politicians were willing to say and do anything so long as it kept them in office, and that meant that there were a lot of dumb laws on the books that made Sanghyuk, as hunter and all that went with it, a walking felony. Add in his illicit conduct with a certain vampire on such a regular basis and he wasn’t sure he could count all the laws he had broken on all his fingers and toes.   
  
Sanghyuk spun some tale to cover said law breaking, claiming to work in a grocery store. A high school dropout, which was the truth, at the very least, who had never even set foot on a college campus. It meant that he was able to quite easily lure Changhyun into talking about himself and his classes and his whole college experience, which kept him from prying too hard into Sanghyuk’s life.   
  
Changhyun was nice, friendly, almost overly so, sliding closer in the booth with each passing minute until their thighs were pressed together warmly and their bottles sometimes clinked together when one of them set theirs down. It was nice. He tried to stop but Sanghyuk couldn’t help basking in the attention, so obvious and frank.   
  
When both their beers were finished, Changhyun reached out and took Sanghyuk’s hand, turning it palm up. He spent a minute tracing patterns on his hand and then said, tracing one of the lines criss-crossing Sanghyuk’s hand, “Look, you’ve got a strong love line.”   
  
Sanghyuk snorted. “That’s the life line.”   
  
“Is it?” Changhyun pressed his thumb to Sanghyuk’s palm, rubbing gently. “I don’t know. I just wanted an excuse to touch you.”   
  
“You don’t need an excuse,” Sanghyuk murmured.   
  
Changhyun leaned in. “I think I do, for how, exactly, I’d like to touch you.” He had a glint in his eyes, and it reminded Sanghyuk of Jaehwan, made him want to play the game.  
  
“And how is that?” Sanghyuk murmured, like a dare. “Tell me.”   
  
Changhyun put his chin on his shoulder, speaking directly into his ear, so that Sanghyuk would definitely be able to hear him over the music. “With my mouth. I’d like to put my mouth all over you. Fuck, Sanghyuk, you are so _hot_ and it’s obvious that you don’t even know it.”   
  
Sanghyuk snorted, turning his head slightly so Changhyun’s mouth brushed against his cheek. “I’m not so naive to not know that.”   
  
“Confidence,” Changhyun whispered, the air puffing against Sanghyuk’s ear, “is sexy.”  
  
So was Changhyun. Sanghyuk could feeling himself growing hard in his pants, erection pressing uncomfortably against the tight jeans he’d dressed in. He shifted and Changhyun sat back, watching the movement, his eyes going down to Sanghyuk’s crotch. His hand rested lightly on Sanghyuk’s thigh. “I could take care of that for you,” he said.   
  
“Not here,” Sanghyuk said. He didn’t want to do it here, wasn’t comfortable enough with this for that. Besides, he didn’t think he wanted just a quick handjob tonight, didn’t want something fast and illicit. He wanted to be shown the kind of attention that apparently he wasn’t going to get any time soon from other quarters. He fucking deserved it.  
  
“Come home with me,” he said.   
  
Changhyun’s eyebrows practically shot off his face, he was so obviously surprised by that. “What?”  
  
“I don’t want you to get me off. I don’t want some quickie behind this club. You told me what you want to do to me and I want you to follow through.”   
  
There was a pause. Sanghyuk began to fear that he had stepped over some boundary, that what Changhyun had said was nothing more than simple flirting — Sanghyuk had so very little experience with other humans, aside from Sungjae, and what he saw of Ilhoon, who was always very frank and upfront about his sexual desires — but then Changhyun smiled, slowly. “Okay,” he said. “Never let it be said that I’m not a man of my word.”   
  
Sanghyuk let him take him by the wrist and lead him from the club.   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan perched on the building opposite Sanghyuk’s apartment, which was becoming a favorite of his. Just shorter than the one Sanghyuk lived in, this building was perfect for when Jaehwan wanted to inflict pain upon himself and stare into the windows of Sanghyuk’s apartment, his living room and bedroom. Jaehwan was hunkered down on the short brick wall that ran along the perimeter of the roof, knowing he was just out of reach of Sanghyuk’s house wards, but not so far as to hinder Jaehwan’s view. Right now the apartment was dark, and Jaehwan could see into that darkness all too well.  
  
Sanghyuk had come home half an hour ago, with another man. When Jaehwan arrived and found the apartment empty, he had assumed that Sanghyuk had gone off to work, before the sunrise, as was his habit recently, and had decided to wait outside his apartment instead of following him like the night before. He hadn’t wanted Sanghyuk to be aware he’d been hanging around, didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. But the point had been moot, apparently, because Sanghyuk hadn’t been hunting tonight anyway. Jaehwan hadn’t needed to smell the alcohol on him to know he was tipsy, the unsteady way he had been walking had been enough.   
  
Since Sanghyuk had come back, he had been holed up in his bedroom with the guy he had brought home. They were fucking so hard that Jaehwan was surprised that Sanghyuk’s shitty little bed hadn’t broken. Sanghyuk was caught underneath the stranger, who was dark and broad and didn’t look a thing like Jaehwan, but Sanghyuk had spread his legs for him anyway. He was clearly enjoying himself thoroughly.   
  
Jaehwan’s hands were curved into the brick wall by his feet, gripping so hard that the wall was starting to crumble underneath them, dust falling to the ground below. He wanted to look away, wanted to spare himself this— this _torture_ , but he kept his eyes open, kept watching intently as Sanghyuk clawed his hands up the stranger’s back. Jaehwan could hear the noise he would be making, his choked off moan. The sound was echoing around his head.   
  
When he had first started watching, he did so in the hopes that somehow, it would detangle all the emotions inside him, like he would be able to find that one thread inside him that was poisoning him, that thread that was pulling him down, pulling him under, and drag it out of himself, tearing and shredding it until he was free. But he felt worse than ever.   
  
It had probably been foolish, but he hadn’t expected that in the time Jaehwan had taken to try and distance himself, Sanghyuk would seek out sex elsewhere. He hadn’t thought it would actually happen, had thought Sanghyuk would have _learned_. No human could match Jaehwan in bed. Sure, Sanghyuk had talked a big talk, about how people wanted him, and maybe he’d take them up on that, but— some stupid, delusional part of Jaehwan had thought it was simply talk, talk to make Jaehwan jealous. He hadn’t expected Sanghyuk to actually try again with someone else at all, let alone to— to let someone else fuck him, not the other way around. But Jaehwan was watching it happen, right there and then, and he was forcing himself to watch, because here was the proof that he did not, and possibly never would, mean as much to Sanghyuk as he feared Sanghyuk was becoming to him. The pain felt raw, like someone was scraping roughly at his chest cavity.   
  
How could Sanghyuk do it, he wondered. How could a mere human manage it, where Jaehwan, three hundred years old, strong, proud, could not manage it. Surely it was just a matter of adjusting his thinking. He could stop himself, somehow, there must be a trick to it, to stop himself from feeling the things that he felt. Why couldn’t he just fucking figure it out, when Sanghyuk so obviously had.   
  
He forced his fingers to loosen, sparing the wall underneath him any more damage. He would bury these feelings further into himself, where they couldn’t come to light, where they could become as used to being in the darkness as he himself was. And in the meantime, he would watch Sanghyuk get fucked to the very end, so he could remember how bad this hurt. If he was so little to Sanghyuk, then what was the point in feeling such pain?   
  
——  
  
“It’s weird having people over when I can’t offer them anything to eat or drink,” Sanghyuk complained, setting his own mug of tea on the kitchen table. “It makes me feel like a bad host.”   
  
Hakyeon grinned at him, his head resting on his hand. “Well, you can hardly offer me a wrist or something,” he said, “and I imagine having blood bags in your fridge would cause some awkward questions next time you had human visitors over.”   
  
“Maybe I should get another fridge,” Sanghyuk said. “Stick it in my wardrobe with those secret books Jaehwan gave me.”   
  
Hakyeon’s eyes softened. “I’d prefer if you didn’t have a secret stash of blood bags in your apartment, Sanghyuk,” he said, and Sanghyuk rolled his eyes and nodded. He didn’t much like the idea either, if he was being honest.   
  
He wrapped his hands around his mug and took a sip. He had been pleased when Hakyeon had texted a few nights ago, asking to come over, just to hang out. It made him think of the old days, when things were more simple. And since Hakyeon had convinced Taekwoon to let them talk, just the two of them, Sanghyuk felt relaxed. It wasn’t that Taekwoon seemed judgemental, it was just that in many ways, he still felt like a stranger. Hakyeon already knew everything about the secret parts of Sanghyuk’s life, and much of the secret parts of Sanghyuk’s mind.   
  
“So,” Hakyeon said, drawing the sound out like he was leading into something significant, “how are things at work?”   
  
Sanghyuk blinked at him, the question throwing him for a second. “Fine,” he said. “Things are pretty great, actually. I just wish there was less paperwork.”   
  
Hakyeon smiled at that. “It’s part of the job, always has been, always will be. Better get used to it.” His smile grew a little more serious. “What about your partner? And the others you’ve mentioned, they sound like a team, of sorts?”   
  
Sanghyuk nodded, smiling a little. “Yeah, we are. It’s good, we all work well together.”  
  
“Do you like them?”   
  
Sanghyuk side-eyed him. “Why?” he teased. “Are you jealous?”   
  
Hakyeon’s smile flattened out into a distinctly grumpy expression. “Kid, I had my time. I’m just checking that they have your back. I wouldn’t want you getting hurt out on a hunt.”   
  
Sanghyuk leaned back a little bit, sobering somewhat. “I do like them,” he said softly. “A lot. And they’re good hunters. Although I think the only thing Ilhoon really has my back on is getting laid.”   
  
Hakyeon raised an eyebrow. “You’re sleeping with someone else?”   
  
“Yeah,” Sanghyuk said. “Well, kind of. Ilhoon suggested that I try— hooking up with people I meet at nightclubs or on nights out. Just casual fun, you know? Since Jaehwan isn’t really coming around anymore.”   
  
Hakyeon seemed like he was holding onto his neutral expression by the skin of his teeth. Sanghyuk didn’t know what was going to be underneath if he broke. “Do you like it?”   
  
Sanghyuk could feel a slight blush growing over his cheeks and nose. It was still embarrassing to talk so candidly about these things with Hakyeon; it felt a bit like discussing his sex life with a parent. “Yeah.” He didn’t think he sounded particularly convincing.   
  
Hakyeon watched him for a few seconds. He was perfectly still, in that strange way only vampires could achieve. It was making Sanghyuk’s wards prickle uncomfortably. Eventually Hakyeon said, “I can’t tell you not to, because not only would that make me a hypocrite, I know you wouldn’t listen to me. But I do think that you need to be careful, Sanghyuk.”   
  
“Don’t worry, mom,” Sanghyuk said with a laugh. “I use protection.”   
  
Hakyeon rolled his eyes and didn’t smile. “That’s not what I meant, Sanghyuk. Just— take care, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt.”   
  
“I won’t,” Sanghyuk said, almost a promise.   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan didn’t know how he’d ended up sprawled on his back in the music room, but he thought it seemed like a good place for him to be. Surrounded by pale white sheets covering vestiges of his past, he felt like he was surrounded by ghosts. He sort of was, he supposed. The edge of a sheet was just out of his reach and he’d thought about shuffling a little so he could drag it over the top of himself. But he didn’t think white sheets and a locked door would save him this time.  
  
He had avoided the music room for decades, going on a century, until he had found himself in here with Sanghyuk, and Jaehwan would have been content avoiding it for another century or five. But Sanghyuk, as Sanghyuk was wont to do, had opened yet another door that Jaehwan would have rather kept firmly shut. And Jaehwan was having trouble figuring out how to close it back up.  
  
But maybe it was alright. Jaehwan was here, after all, in this room. It hurt less, now, after so much time had passed. He couldn’t wait a century to go see Sanghyuk again, because Sanghyuk— he didn’t have a century, and Jaehwan turned away from that thought. He couldn’t wait a century, but Jaehwan _had_ stayed away from Sanghyuk for two whole months now, satisfying himself with nights spent watching over him carefully, drinking him in when he had the chance to do so with a physical distance between them as a barrier. He would not say that he felt calmer, but he felt more in control of himself, to a degree. It was time, he felt, to chance a visit with Sanghyuk. See how the distance had affected him.  
  
Jaehwan deliberately shied away from the thought that he should stay away longer, that if he was as strong as he thought, as okay as he thought, he would. He should stay away for a year, two years, until the fire between them cooled, until what Jaehwan was so entranced by within Sanghyuk had faded. Until Sanghyuk was someone else altogether.  
  
Sanghyuk was already someone else altogether, utterly altered from the soft faced tentative boy he’d first kissed. And Jaehwan was afraid if he waited too long, it would be Sanghyuk that forgot Jaehwan, and not the other way around.   
  
He hated that it mattered so much to him.  
  
Jaehwan sat up slowly, averting his eyes carefully from the piano in the corner of the room, even covered in a sheet as it was. He could still hear Sanghyuk asking him to play something, practically begging. He rather got the feeling that if Sanghyuk begged him now, he would not be able to deny him again.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk was making coffee when he heard the tapping coming from his bedroom. He paused for a moment, spoon clinking against the side of his cup, taking stock of the surge of emotions he felt at that sound. Most of it, by this point, was just anger.   
  
Then he lay his spoon down and walked into his bedroom, surprisingly calmly. He had pulled down the blinds and when he pulled them back up, Jaehwan was crouching on the windowsill just like he always did, looking more precarious than ever. At the sight of Sanghyuk he stopped tapping. “Hello,” he said, muffled through the window pane.   
  
Sanghyuk raised an arch eyebrow. “Hello.”  
  
Jaehwan made a sharp upwards motion with his hands. “Let me in, love.”   
  
Sanghyuk thought about it. Part of him didn’t want to. In fact, most of him didn’t want to, still stinging from being on the other side of being locked out, and _two fucking months of silence_. But the part of him that wanted to hear Jaehwan explain himself was stronger, so he slid the window open.  
  
Jaehwan flitted in, landing without a sound on the floor. He straightened and looked around the room, nostrils flaring as he sniffed, apparently smelling for something. “What?” Sanghyuk asked. “Is it not up to your standards?”   
  
“It smells like someone else in here,” Jaehwan said quietly.  
  
Sanghyuk knew perfectly well what he was trying to say, but he wasn’t going to fall for it. He had nothing he needed to be ashamed for, nothing to feel bad about. “Am I not allowed guests in my own apartment?”   
  
A pause before Jaehwan snorted. “I suppose you are.”  
  
“Thank you for your permission,” Sanghyuk said sarcastically. Jaehwan kept looking around the room, like he was taking it in, and made no move towards Sanghyuk, keeping a good foot or two of distance between them. “Why are you here?”   
  
“Why do you think I’m here?” Jaehwan asked, snappy all of a sudden.   
  
Sanghyuk raised his eyebrows, taken aback. “I genuinely don’t know, Jaehwan, why don’t you enlighten me? I mean, you’re the one who hasn’t been over here in almost two fucking months. I’ve seen Hakyeon and Wonshik and Hongbin, but I haven’t seen you. I have no idea what you want, what’s been going through your mind.”   
  
“Yes, Wonshik did tell me that you had seen them,” Jaehwan said. He sounded _bitter_. “Never mind that I told you it wouldn’t be safe to see Crazy.”  
  
Sanghyuk did a slow turn, his arms held out by his sides. “Yeah, you did say that. And look at me, I’ve met up with them all and I’m perfectly fine. It’s almost as though I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions in regards to my safety. Almost like I’m a hunter and can take care of myself.”   
  
Jaehwan actually growled at him. “That’s not why I told you to stay away.”   
  
“But you didn’t just tell me, did you,” Sanghyuk fired back. “No, you fucking dictated it. You made sure I couldn’t get back into your house no matter what, even though it wasn’t just your choice to make. That was _really_ fucking low, Jaehwan, I didn’t think you’d—”  
  
“I was trying,” Jaehwan bit out, “to keep you safe.”   
  
“No, you were trying to control what I can and can’t do. You can’t dictate every part of my life, Jaehwan, can’t treat me like I’m a plaything and then expect me to be happy to see you when you decide to roll back around.”  
  
Jaehwan let out a short bark of laughter, almost self-deprecating. “Well, then I guess I don’t know why I came over,” he said, sweeping his arm as if to encompass the whole room. “I thought you would be pleased to see me, I thought you would be gagging for my dick. But then, I suppose it hasn’t been a dry two months for you, has it?”   
  
Sanghyuk wanted to scream, wanted to punch him in the face. That would probably just make things worse and hurt his hand besides, so he held off for now. “That’s none of your business,” he managed to say, through gritted teeth. Were they really going to fight over this _again_. Sanghyuk was not going to put up with this every time he slept with someone else. Not after Jaehwan had left him high and dry for two months.  
  
Jaehwan stared at Sanghyuk’s bed, a hard, intense stare, like he was dressing it down, and Sanghyuk waited, waited for the outburst. But it didn’t come.  
  
Something in Jaehwan’s face cleared and when he turned to Sanghyuk he was carefully blank. “You’re right.”  
  
Sanghyuk blinked at him, frowning in confusion at the switch. “Sorry, did you just say someone other than you was right?”   
  
“Don’t be obnoxious, love,” Jaehwan said, silky, and oh, that was rich, coming from him. “It is none of my business. If you want to fuck someone else then I guess that’s up to you. But when I told you to stay away, that was genuinely because Crazy isn’t safe, and neither is Hakyeon, to be honest. So don’t get snappy at me for trying to keep you from being in that situation again.”   
  
Sanghyuk felt some of his irritation leaving him. Jaehwan had sounded genuine, serious, like he believed it himself at the very least. And maybe it was true, maybe he really had been trying to think of Sanghyuk’s safety, but— “It’s not your call to make, Jaehwan, and be honest with yourself here. Hongbin was _never_ safe. This isn’t some new development, we’ve been through it before. Why does it matter again, all of a sudden?”  
  
“There’s stuff,” Jaehwan said stiffly. “Stuff I am trying to sort out, in relation to it.”   
  
It was like Hongbin had said, but that still wasn’t giving Sanghyuk much to work with. “And that stuff involved first locking me out of the house and then subsequently following me around?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest and giving Jaehwan an unimpressed look. Jaehwan looked back at him, face still carefully blank. “I could feel you, a few times, I just stopped calling out to you. I told you before, Jaehwan, I don’t like it.”   
  
Jaehwan was silent for a long time, then his hands were around Sanghyuk’s waist, pulling their bodies close together. He kissed Sanghyuk hard, and Sanghyuk knew this was a tactic, was Jaehwan just trying to get him to stop talking, to let it go. His body responded immediately, wards sending out a pulse of energy, skin tingling where Jaehwan was touching him. Sanghyuk hated himself for it and turned his face away, gasping sharply.  
  
“Are we going to spend the whole night talking about inconsequential things?” Jaehwan murmured, his eyes on Sanghyuk’s mouth. Sanghyuk’s lips felt bruised already.   
  
“You were gone for two months, you can’t just— it’s not _fair_ , Jaehwan—”   
  
Jaehwan kissed him again, backing him up until Sanghyuk felt his knees hit the bed. He grabbed at Jaehwan’s shoulders to stop himself from toppling backwards. “Life’s not fair, love,” Jaehwan whispered, letting Sanghyuk go and giving him a push that sent him back onto the bed.   
  
“Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk said, almost a snarl, “I want— want a fucking apology at least— _two months_ —”  
  
Jaehwan was on him then, crawling over his body, and Sanghyuk looked up at him furiously. “I should not have stayed away so long,” Jaehwan conceded, eyes dark, “but I shan’t apologize for taking steps to protect you.”  
  
“You’re going to unlock the grate for me,” Sanghyuk said, his hands on Jaehwan’s chest, bracing.   
  
“Am I?” Jaehwan asked, raising an eyebrow. He nuzzled at Sanghyuk’s neck, pressing kisses against his skin, and Sanghyuk’s wards sizzled.   
  
“Yes,” Sanghyuk said, and now he was definitely snarling. “If you don’t want me to rescind your fucking invitation, you will.”  
  
Jaehwan stilled, for a long moment, and then, almost thoughtfully, pressed a single kiss against Sanghyuk’s pulse point. Sanghyuk closed his eyes, held his breath.  
  
“Alright,” Jaehwan whispered, pulling back a little. Sanghyuk opened his eyes to meet his gaze.  
  
Alright?” he echoed.  
  
Jaehwan smiled without humor. “I can’t exactly say no, since you have compelled me thus.” He sighed. “And you call me a dictator.”  
  
Sanghyuk snorted. “And my apology?”  
  
Another pause, and Jaehwan’s eyes shuttered. “I am sorry for staying away so long, I should not have,” he said, and it was odd, off, like he meant the apology but not the words. But Sanghyuk would take what he could get.  
  
“Good,” Sanghyuk said, and he leaned up and sealed his mouth over Jaehwan’s.  
  
When they broke apart Sanghyuk was breathing a bit heavier, and Jaehwan let out a shivery little sigh. “Your bed smells like that other man,” Jaehwan muttered.  
  
Sanghyuk’s eyes narrowed, and he pulled back, to look Jaehwan in the eyes. “Yeah, that’s going to happen, sometimes. Because I am going to be fucking other people.”  
  
Jaehwan held his gaze. “Why? I told you before, none of them will ever be as good as me.”  
  
That made Sanghyuk laugh, head tipping back into the mattress. “Your ego is the size of Canada,” he said, feeling almost fond. Jaehwan was scowling, but he seemed less petulant and more genuinely confused. “I like sex, Jaehwan. I’m— I have options. I’ve realized that. I’m attractive and people want me, and I— I like it. I don’t want to waste it. Don’t you feel that way too?”  
  
“No,” Jaehwan said flatly. It was like he just enjoyed being contrary.  
  
Sanghyuk sighed, settling back further into the mattress. “Well, look, Jaehwan. You ditched me, and you can’t just— just do that and expect me to have waited passively for you to come back, nor can you expect that of me in the future.”  
  
Jaehwan jerked. “What—”  
  
“I know you have some issues right now,” Sanghyuk said, softer now but no less firmly. “You have a life outside of me, and so do I you. I know that. But I reserve my right to have sex with others, just as you do. Just because you apparently don’t want to exercise that right doesn’t mean I can’t.”  
  
Jaehwan was gritting his teeth, Sanghyuk could see it. He expected a cutting remark, but Jaehwan spoke levelly. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. You may do as you wish.”  
  
They held one another’s gazes. “Yes,” Sanghyuk murmured, “I may.” He tilted his head then, baring his neck in offering, hoping to soothe Jaehwan’s wounded pride.  
  
Jaehwan ducked down immediately, pressing his mouth to the side of Sanghyuk’s throat, and Sanghyuk let out a fluttery sigh.  
  
——  
  
Wonshik wasn’t sure what Hakyeon had said to Taekwoon to get him to stay behind in their apartment that night, but there was something decidedly odd about seeing him without his stoic shadow, after months of what seemed to be gearing up to permanent attachment. He had joked a little about attachment issues and high dependency more than once, but Hakyeon seemed to be okay by himself for a night.   
  
Wonshik wondered wryly if Taekwoon would be faring any better back home.   
  
In winter, the streets felt more deserted in the dead of night, the darkness more settled. It didn’t really make it any harder to find food — they had both fed on their way over to meet Hakyeon — but it did make it possible to walk the streets a bit more brazenly, instead of flitting quickly over rooftops, so long as they stuck rather more to the alleys and side streets than the ones lined with street lamps. They didn’t want anyone spying them out of a window and calling the VCF on them.   
  
But still, it was nice to be outside, in the city. Although Wonshik couldn’t really sense it on his skin, when he tried artificial breathing, it came out white and smoky, so the night was a particularly cold one, the air crisp. He’d preferred lazy, hot summer evenings as a human, but these were okay, now, when the coldness kept most people to their beds and the streets became their own.   
  
Hakyeon seemed to be in a good mood too, his laughter ringing just shy of too loud through the alley they were, for lack of a better word, loitering in. Hongbin had been telling him the story of Wonshik falling out of bed a few days ago, waking only once the sun had set. What Hongbin had failed to relay was that he had been the one to push him. Wonshik remembered, in a sleepy way that he associated with dreams from when he had been human, feeling Hongbin’s knee against his back, shoving in his sleep.   
  
“You kicked me out,” Wonshik pointed out.   
  
“How would you know,” Hongbin asked sweetly. “You were asleep.”   
  
Wonshik glared at him and Hakyeon laughed, softly. Hongbin brushed past Wonshik, his hand touching his hip briefly as he headed to the entrance to the alley. His camera was slung around his neck, and once he was only just still inside the shadows, he lifted it to take a photo or two of the buildings opposite.   
  
Wonshik felt Hakyeon staring at him and when he glanced over, he saw Hakyeon looking at him with an indulgent smile. Wonshik stuck his tongue out at him.   
  
“How are things?” Hakyeon murmured, leaning back against the wall while they waited for Hongbin to take his photos. “At home, I mean. Are they any better?”   
  
Wonshik thought about it for a second, coming over to lean against the wall, mimicking Hakyeon’s pose. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Things have been tense recently.” He caught Hakyeon’s raised eyebrow. “More tense than normal.”  
  
Hongbin sauntered back over, adjusting the straps on his camera. “Are we talking about Jaehwan?” he asked.   
  
“In a manner of speaking.” Hakyeon said. “I was wondering how things were, living with him now. If things have changed.”   
  
Hongbin exchanged a look with Wonshik. “Well, it’s like Wonshik said. It’s been tense. I think that maybe Jaehwan and Sanghyuk have split—” He caught sight of Hakyeon opening his mouth and corrected himself quickly. “ _Stopped seeing_ each other.”   
  
That seemed to make Hakyeon perk up, which made Wonshik want to roll his eyes. “Really? Sanghyuk did say he was getting fed up but— what happened?”  
  
“Jaehwan went to see Sanghyuk a few nights ago,” Hongbin said. “Not long after we saw Sanghyuk. I think he was— upset, that we had gone to see him without including him. He was gone for quite a while, which we figured meant that they had kissed and made up, so to speak. But when he did come home, he seemed— off.”   
  
Off was a kind way of putting it. Jaehwan had come back from whatever had happened looking like a thundercloud about to explode. The dark look on his face as he had flitted past Wonshik and Hongbin reading in the living room had stopped either of them from saying a word to him even in greeting. He had seemed— tired, somehow, in a way that a vampire shouldn’t have.   
  
“He smelled like sex,” Hongbin murmured, to which Wonshik and Hakyeon gave him an exasperated look. “Well, he did! But it seemed off, like I said.”   
  
“Do you think they fought?”  
  
Wonshik picked at the brick beneath his hand idly. “When do they not fight?”   
  
Hongbin sighed, a thoughtful expression on his face. “He hasn’t been to see Sanghyuk since then.”  
  
“How do you know?” Hakyeon asked skeptically.   
  
“He’s different when he goes to see Sanghyuk. He dresses nicer, holds himself a little different.” Hongbin gave a wry smile. “Half the time I think he’s trying to get one of us to comment on it.”  
  
“Well, he always was one for the attention,” Hakyeon said.   
  
“Yeah, but it makes it easy to spot when he’s intending to go see Sanghyuk, and he hasn’t been, but he does go out a lot. Whenever he is home, it’s like walking around a bunch of landmines. He rips into us, if we say anything wrong, if we _breathe_ wrong. And sometimes he can be _vicious_.” Hongbin rolled his eyes, like the things Jaehwan said didn’t actually bother him; it was possibly true, but Wonshik certainly was bothered.   
  
Hakyeon pushed himself up off the wall, scuffing his shoe against the ground in a strangely human gesture. “What do you think he does when he goes out?”   
  
Hongbin gave Wonshik a look, who directed the look to Hakyeon. “What do you think?”   
  
Hakyeon sighed. “Do you think— no, of course he would. Just because Sanghyuk told him to stop following him around, doesn’t mean he would, right? How many times would this make?”   
  
Wonshik ran a hand through his hair, staying silent. Hakyeon was chewing hard on his bottom lip, almost enough to draw blood. Wonshik cared, of course he did, and he didn’t want to see Sanghyuk hurt or broken by Jaehwan’s whims. But Hakyeon had always felt this relationship between Jaehwan and Sanghyuk more, had always carried the most worry.   
  
“There’s nothing we can do one way or another,” Hakyeon murmured eventually. “We know Sanghyuk doesn’t take well to other people interfering in his life— he told us that last time, and I don’t want him to start getting fed up with us too. I mean, I really hope Sanghyuk told Jaehwan to fuck off, and if he has I will applaud that decision, but if he hasn’t— it’s not my place to meddle directly. Even if I want to.” Wonshik was a little surprised by that. Hakyeon always thought it was his place to meddle, to manage them like they were little chicks and he was a mother hen. Maybe turning — and Taekwoon — were having a sort of calming influence on him.  
  
Hongbin rubbed at the back of his neck. “I don’t want to go over Sanghyuk’s head either. I’m just starting to get worried about Jaehwan.” Hakyeon shot him a look. “Not worried about Jaehwan himself per se, but just what his mood swings mean for Sanghyuk. For all of us, really. It’s gotten so complicated.”  
  
“It has, and we’re going to have to keep an eye on it, even if we can’t do anything.” Hakyeon sighed and then glanced up at the sky, the clouds misting over the moonlight. “I should head home, I think. Keep me updated on how this goes, please?”   
  
“Of course,” Hongbin said, rather seriously.   
  
Wonshik grinned at Hakyeon. “What’s wrong, missing lover boy already?”   
  
Hakyeon’s response was a wicked smile, before he disappeared, flitting away into the night.  
  
——  
  
On the nights where they weren’t being sent out on hunts, Sanghyuk was becoming somewhat concerned that their jobs were becoming less about actual work and more about simply gossip. He supposed that’s what happened when you hired someone like Ilhoon.   
  
“ _Yes, you may do as you wish_ ,” Sanghyuk recited. “That’s what he said to me.” He was unable to hide his obvious annoyance. “What the fuck does that even mean?”  
  
Ilhoon, his feet propped up on Hyunsik’s lap where they’d dragged their chairs around Sanghyuk and Sungjae’s area, raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you ask?”   
  
Sanghyuk shuffled in his seat, preventing his blush through willpower alone. “No, because he distracted me by sucking my dick.”   
  
Hyunsik and Sungjae let out barks of laughter, Hyunsik dislodging Ilhoon’s feet as he did so. Ilhoon just gave Sanghyuk an exasperated look and sighed so heavily that Hyunsik started laughing again. Sanghyuk looked back at him defiantly.   
  
“I mean, like, it seems pretty self-explanatory,” Ilhoon said, giving a shrug. “Do whatever you want, if you think he meant it.” He sat up and grinned at Sanghyuk, as predatory as any vampire Sanghyuk had met. “But just, you know, I know a club by the arts university that you might want to try out one night. Think about it.”  
  
“Maybe I will,” Sanghyuk said, and Ilhoon thankfully seemed to accept that.   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan checked his reflection in the mirror one last time, pulling his shirt collar straight. He had been somewhat remiss recently, he felt, when it came to matters of his appearance. There were some things he could sacrifice in the face of everything, but his appearance shouldn’t be one of them.   
  
Satisfied that he looked his best, he left his room and flitted to the living room, where he was greeted by Wonshik, sprawled on the couch, a book open in his hands. “My dear child,” Jaehwan drawled, slowing to a human paced saunter as he passed him. “Congratulations. I had not thought you could read.”   
  
Wonshik twitched but wisely didn’t say anything. He sat up, tossing the book aside carelessly like he wasn’t interested in it. Hongbin was nowhere to be seen for once. It was early; perhaps he was still sleeping. That wasn’t always a good sign.   
  
“Where’s Crazy?” he asked.  
  
“Taking photos in the library,” Wonshik said. He caught Jaehwan’s look and shrugged. “Are you going out?”  
  
Jaehwan looked down at himself. “Evidently.”   
  
“Where are you going? To see Sanghyuk?”   
  
Jaehwan narrowed his eyes. “That is none of your business. Why do you ask?”   
  
“I was just going to ask you to give him a message from me—”  
  
“I am no messenger,” Jaehwan interrupted. “If you wish to say something to him, you will need to see him yourself. Besides,” he added, “I am not going to meet with Sanghyuk.” He left, swanning out before Wonshik could say anything more.   
  
Jaehwan knew the general area he was heading to, and once there, the scent of his quarry wasn’t hard to find, not when it was nearly as familiar to Jaehwan now as his own. He tracked it quickly to the west of the city, where he found Sanghyuk walking around with that stupid partner of his, the two of them talking and laughing, too at ease for a hunt.   
  
Jaehwan rested on the edge of a building near to where they were walking, taking care to remain out of range of Sanghyuk’s wards. Unfortunately it meant that he could not hear what was being said, but that was the price he would have to pay. He couldn’t risk Sanghyuk knowing that he was still following him.   
  
He wanted to see Sanghyuk, had to know that he was still safe and whole. But he couldn’t face him, not now, when Sanghyuk had proven last time they met how little he seemed to care now. He had been angry, more angry than Jaehwan had anticipated, really. And Jaehwan would have liked to believe that Sanghyuk had been angry because he’d been hurt, had missed Jaehwan, but he wasn’t going to lie to himself like that. It had simply been about control.  
  
Locking Sanghyuk out had been a mistake. He could admit it to himself, now that he saw it had all been in vain anyway. He had been trying to guard his heart, and as a byproduct had given Sanghyuk the opportunity and time to realize he was desireable, had, as he said, options, and that he could _take them_. With this knowledge, he seemed to no longer need Jaehwan. Not the way Jaehwan needed him. After all, their relationship was supposed to be about sex, and if Sanghyuk was getting it from elsewhere, then Jaehwan was no longer vital. And that wouldn’t matter, if Jaehwan had managed to actually dim the emotions in him during their little break. But he hadn’t. So it had all been fucking pointless. He’d cut off his nose to spite his face, it seemed.  
  
Jaehwan watched, transfixed, as Sanghyuk nudged his partner and then laughed, bright and open. This was fine, for Jaehwan, now. He had nothing to lose by keeping his distance, the damage had already been done, and it was easier to handle when he wasn’t confronted with Sanghyuk’s apathy to his face. He could hear Sanghyuk’s heartbeat, strong and hard and _alive_.   
  
This was enough, for now.   
  
——  
  
A week passed without anything from Jaehwan. Sanghyuk had expected Jaehwan to go back to normal, after they had spoken, and he’d been prepared for his time to be monopolised by Jaehwan and his dick, but there was nothing but a return to radio silence.   
  
It left him frustrated, full of that anxious energy and unable to work it out of himself. He didn’t like waiting around for Jaehwan, didn’t like the way it made him feel. He had told Jaehwan that he wouldn’t just sit patiently and wait for him to come around, to bestow his almighty vampire dick on him. He had his own life, one which he knew he had to keep living.   
  
So he wrangled himself into his best jeans, the pair that kept Sungjae’s eyes on his ass whenever he wore them, and took himself to a club, figuring that either alcohol or sex was going to solve the problem.   
  
Later, he lay on his back in a stranger’s bed, staring up at the ceiling. His partner for the night, a tall man whose name Sanghyuk could barely remember, lay beside him, sleeping. Sanghyuk watched his chest rise and fall gently, thought about putting his hand out to feel his pulse against his palm.   
  
Was that it, the thing that was so wrong with this picture? He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing the heels of his hands into them until he saw spots and the room was spinning when he let up. It was weirdly grounding in this strange room.   
  
He had gone to the club looking for something, he could feel that, but he hadn’t known what that was then, and he sure as hell didn’t know what it had been now. It didn’t feel like something he had lost, just something intangible that was remaining outside of his grasp no matter how hard he stretched.   
  
He just knew that whatever it was, he hadn’t found it tonight, with this man.


	3. Chapter 3

  
The rain thundered off the roof of Sanghyuk’s car as he pulled into the parking lot a few blocks from Jaehwan’s place. This was as close as he was willing to park, but on days like this, those rainy days leading into summer, he wished that there was some sort of warded parking lot he could put the car in.   
  
By the time he ran the few blocks to the alley he was completely soaked through, his leather jacket sticking to his skin. He was half afraid that the grate would still reject him, that Jaehwan would have gone back on his word, but it came easily, the wards accepting him. Good.  
  
He peeled his jacket off, shivering, as he made his way through the tunnels. It was still so cold down here, and he knew it wasn’t going to be much warmer inside Jaehwan’s house.   
  
He was still shivering when he walked into the house, hooking his jacket over the generally unused coat hook at the door to let it dry off some. If the weather was still like this afterwards, then he would probably just spend the night here rather than walk back into it. That had halfway been his plan anyway.   
  
Hongbin and Wonshik were in the living room, apparently not willing to venture outside in weather like this even as vampires. Sanghyuk expected that there were slim pickings to be had during rainy nights, with most of the humans choosing to stay inside where it was warm and dry. There were always the drug addicts, though, and the homeless. Bad weather always meant bad news for those people.   
  
“Hey, kiddo,” Wonshik said, looking surprised to see him. Sanghyuk probably should have called ahead. “What— did you come here in the rain?”   
  
“Yeah,” Sanghyuk said, shaking his head to stop water droplets going into his eyes, aware that he probably looked like a wet dog as he did so. “Not my greatest idea, I’ll admit, but—”  
  
“But?” Hongbin prompted.  
  
“I wanted to see Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk said, with an attempt at a casual shrug. It had been a week since he had last slept with someone he had picked up in a nightclub, and he hadn’t heard anything from Jaehwan since the night they— well, made up, if one could call it that. Jaehwan vanishing again for a few days to a week he could dismiss as Jaehwan being busy; over two weeks just made it seem like he was moping about something. Sanghyuk wanted to know which it was, and if Jaehwan wasn’t going to come clear it up for him, then that put the ball in Sanghyuk’s court. And he was going to play.  
  
Wonshik and Hongbin exchanged looks, and for once it was Wonshik who broached the subject. “I thought— well. He went to see you a few weeks ago and came back surly as fuck so we figured—”   
  
“We figured you’d told him off for neglecting you for months,” Hongbin finished for him, as he was wont to do.   
  
“And his mood hasn’t much improved, so, we kind of were wondering if you weren’t— seeing one another anymore,” Wonshik added. That _definitely_ sounded like Jaehwan was just moping.   
  
He looked nervous, like he thought Sanghyuk would be mad, but Sanghyuk already knew Wonshik and Hakyeon were eternally hoping this thing with Jaehwan wouldn’t pan out. “He came over,” Sanghyuk said. “We talked, I told him off for, well, everything. I told him that I wasn’t going to keep waiting around for him, that I was going to sleep with other people if I wanted to. I haven’t heard anything since, so I thought I’d come see what’s up.”   
  
“Oh,” said Hongbin, very softly. “Well, that explains some things.”   
  
“Yeah, sorry if he’s been a dick. He doesn’t share well. But he needs to get over it.” Sanghyuk shrugged, and caught Hongbin and Wonshik sharing a look. “What? What is it?”   
  
Hongbin shook his head in answer, giving Sanghyuk that wide smile which seemed always to suggest that he had great secrets, but which Sanghyuk never found it possible to press against. He dreaded to think what that smile must do to Wonshik.   
  
“Never mind,” Hongbin said cheerfully. “You must be freezing cold. Do you want to use our shower, to warm up?”   
  
“No,” said Sanghyuk, smiling. “It’s okay. I’m just going to go see Jaehwan, I’ll be fine.”   
  
He left the room, aware that they were both watching him go, and would no doubt be talking about him after he left. He didn’t want to know what they had to say about this. He was also somewhat apprehensive, now, about the sort of mood Jaehwan would be in. Sanghyuk didn’t feel like dealing with moping, or worse, another outburst.  
  
Sanghyuk entered Jaehwan’s bedroom, not bothering to knock, and found him sitting on his bed, seemingly reading. “Hello, love,” he said, without lifting his head. He didn’t seem particularly sulky. Sanghyuk watched as he marked his place and glanced up. Then Jaehwan stared. “You look like a drowned rat.”   
  
“I feel like one too,” Sanghyuk said simply.   
  
Jaehwan looked thoroughly disgusted by it. He lay his book down beside him and slid off the bed. “You’re going to have a bath,” he said. “Then we’re going to talk about how silly you are, walking places in the rain.”   
  
“I thought you would be pleased to see me,” Sanghyuk said. “I haven’t seen you in over two weeks.” He bit on his tongue to stop himself from saying anything else. He sounded enough like a petulant child as it was.  
  
“I have been busy,” Jaehwan said blandly, as he moved to pass Sanghyuk on his way to the bathroom.   
  
Sanghyuk reached out and snagged Jaehwan’s sleeve, tugging him close. For all his disgust at Sanghyuk’s current state, he came easily, sighing in that way he did when he found himself looking up at Sanghyuk slightly. Sanghyuk kissed him gently. “Hey,” he murmured, testing the waters.   
  
He waited, to see if Jaehwan would make a quip, would bring up Sanghyuk’s recent activities, but all that happened was Jaehwan sighed. “You _smell_ like a drowned rat,” Jaehwan said, detangling himself from Sanghyuk’s arms and moving away faster than Sanghyuk could react. The next thing he said was from the bathroom. “What have you been doing tonight, did you run all the way here?”   
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said. He leaned against the open bathroom door, watching Jaehwan as he set about filling the bathtub, pouring in bath salts and whatever else he used in his self care bathing sessions. Sanghyuk was surprised he was having them bestowed upon him. “Are you going to join me?”   
  
Jaehwan went still, bent over the tub. He straightened and said, slowly, “I’m not touching you while you smell like that.”   
  
“Oh, really?” Sanghyuk asked. He stepped into the room, tugging the hem of his shirt over his head. The air in the bathroom was chilly on his still-damp skin and he shivered, rubbing at his arms. He caught Jaehwan looking at him before he glanced away, trying to pretend he hadn’t just been caught. Sanghyuk grinned.  
  
“That’s a shame,” he said, dropping his shirt to the floor. It made a wet _plop_ as it hit. “I had plans.”   
  
Jaehwan put the tiny pot of bath salts away on a shelf before he turned back, his face schooled into blankness. “Plans?”   
  
“Mmmm,” Sanghyuk murmured, stepping close to the bath. There was steam was rising off the sweet smelling water in lazy swirls, hot and inviting. “But it’s okay, I can take care of it myself.”   
  
Jaehwan’s fingers slipped into the belt hoops on his jeans and pulled him in, their hips bumping. “Tell me,” he said, “what your plans were.”   
  
“I could just show you,” Sanghyuk said softly. After a moment, Jaehwan nodded, exhaling shakily.   
  
Smiling — sometimes it was just _too_ easy — Sanghyuk sank down onto his knees, his hands trailing down Jaehwan’s chest to the buttons on his pants. He fiddled with them a moment, forehead resting on Jaehwan’s stomach, and then undid them, tugging them down over Jaehwan’s slim hips.   
  
As usual, Jaehwan wasn’t wearing underwear, but Sanghyuk would have been more surprised if he had been. He was already half hard, and Sanghyuk heard him hiss as he leaned in and kissed the head, tongue flicking lightly against the slit.   
  
“This is why you came over uninvited?” Jaehwan asked, a strange edge in his voice. “To suck my cock?”  
  
“Well, that was part of it,” Sanghyuk murmured. He looked up at Jaehwan from under his eyelashes. “Are you complaining?”   
  
“Not at all,” Jaehwan mumbled.   
  
Sanghyuk smirked. He wrapped his lips around the head of Jaehwan’s cock and sucked gently. Jaehwan leaned back slightly, apparently bracing himself against the bathtub. His cock was fully hard now, precome salty against Sanghyuk’s tongue.   
  
Sanghyuk circled his fingers around the base of Jaehwan’s cock. He pumped his hand up and down the shaft, suckling at the head, letting his tongue press and flick against the underside of Jaehwan’s cock, where he knew he was sensitive, where he knew Jaehwan liked it.   
  
“Love,” Jaehwan whispered, “please.”  
  
Sanghyuk took a moment to relax his throat and then sank down as far as he could, taking Jaehwan right down to almost the base. He had, he was highly pleased to note, become much better at this over the past year. With some struggle, he sucked, once, and then pulled off.   
  
“Fuck,” Jaehwan hissed. “Sanghyuk, fuck, I’m trying to—”   
  
Sanghyuk glanced up. Jaehwan’s hands were floating in midair, fists clenching and then unclenching. Sanghyuk couldn’t help his chuckle, the air puffing against Jaehwan’s cock. “What are you doing?”   
  
“I do not want to touch your hair when it is _damp_ ,” Jaehwan said, sounding very strained.   
  
“You’ve touched it plenty of times when it’s been damp,” Sanghyuk said, trying to hold his laughter in.  
  
“Not when it was rain water damp.” Jaehwan could not have sounded more indignant at the trial that Sanghyuk was apparently putting him through.   
  
“You’re a snob,” Sanghyuk said. “And far too conscious of this stuff for a vampire who has lived for three hundred years.”   
  
“I am _cultured_ ,” Jaehwan said.   
  
Sanghyuk was about to inform Jaehwan that the word he was looking for was _pretentious_ when he found himself on his back on the floor, Jaehwan’s hands scrambling at his jeans. “Oh my god,” Sanghyuk gasped, twisting. “This floor is _freezing_.”   
  
“It’s _marble_ ,” Jaehwan said. “Of course it is.”   
  
“No, don’t—” But that was as far as Sanghyuk got before his pants had disappeared and he was laying on utterly naked on the cold floor. He yelped. “Can’t we do this in the warm bath that’s right _there_?”  
  
“Shut up,” Jaehwan murmured. He was naked too, now, and he brought Sanghyuk’s hips to his, rolling them so that their cocks dragged together.   
  
“Oh,” Sanghyuk gasped, and he forgot about the cold floor, forgot about the warm bath, forgot about anything but the continuous slow drag of Jaehwan’s cock against his. Jaehwan’s hand wrapped around both their cocks, smearing a mix of precome and Sanghyuk’s saliva down the shafts. Sanghyuk pressed up into it, his hands clutching at Jaehwan’s shoulders.   
  
“This wasn’t in my plans,” he said breathlessly.   
  
“Your plan was taking too long,” Jaehwan grunted.   
  
Sanghyuk laughed, and rolled his hips, meeting Jaehwan on a thrust. Jaehwan pressed his head to his shoulder, Sanghyuk’s mouth pressing into his hair. His chest felt hot, tight; how was it possible that even this, this thing that was more juvenile than anything else, felt better, more intense, than anything he had done with anyone else so far—  
  
But Sanghyuk knew why. Part of it was the wards, the way they reacted to Jaehwan, the endorphins being around a vampire sent uncoiling in his system. But part of it was just Jaehwan.  
  
“I think this is going to be embarrassing,” he managed to get out, one hand clawing at the back of Jaehwan’s neck.   
  
“Well, it’s been a while since you were fucked properly,” Jaehwan said. Sanghyuk could feel his fangs run out, could feel them pressing into his skin. “It’s been, what, three weeks almost? When did I last have you?”  
  
Sanghyuk snorted. “There’s that ego again,” he said, not about to tell Jaehwan he was almost right. “Are you going to fuck me? Are you going to fuck me _properly_?”   
  
“Only if you ask very nicely,” Jaehwan said.   
  
“Oh, I’ll _beg_ ,” Sanghyuk murmured.   
  
Jaehwan rolled his hips slowly, deliberately, until Sanghyuk was gasping out his name, gasping out _yes_ and _please_ and _kiss me_ , until he was coming undone and just simply _coming_. Jaehwan followed him a few seconds later, his come landing on Sanghyuk’s stomach, mixing with his own.   
  
Jaehwan lifted himself off him with a groan. Sanghyuk felt sticky and sweaty now along with still being a bit damp, but the floor under his back was a good deal warmer now. Jaehwan sniffed at him.   
  
“You smell even worse now,” he said. He didn’t seem as bothered by it as before.  
  
“Fine,” Sanghyuk grumbled, getting reluctantly to his feet. “I’ll wash up, and then will you stop whining?”   
  
Jaehwan raised an eyebrow. “Depends on how nicely you beg.”   
  
He headed for the door. Sanghyuk was definitely bathing alone, it seemed. Jaehwan was almost out of the door, and Sanghyuk had one foot in the tub, when he paused. “Jaehwan,” he said softly. “Why didn’t you kiss me?”   
  
Jaehwan shut the door behind him silently.  
  
—-  
  
It wasn’t as though the rain water really affected them, but Wonshik could have done without being soaked through to the bone. He complained as such to Hongbin, who just gave him a distinctly unimpressed look.   
  
It had been Hongbin’s idea, though, to update Hakyeon on the latest development, to travel all that way through all the rain. It was true that it got them out of the house in which Sanghyuk and Jaehwan were almost certainly banging, which could only be a good thing to Wonshik’s mind, but at this point he was almost used to that. At least he couldn’t hear it.   
  
“We’ll have to stay over,” Hongbin murmured, as he dropped down into the tunnel leading to Hakyeon and Taekwoon’s place. “We’ll never make it back before sunrise.”   
  
Wonshik groaned. “Taekwoon’s couch _sucks_.”   
  
“You want to share his bed with him?” Hongbin asked, amused, and laughed when Wonshik shuddered.   
  
“It’s just— it smells like come.”  
  
“The whole apartment smells like come. They’re like newlyweds.”  
  
It took a few moments more than usual for the door to be answered, and when it opened, they were greeted by a ruffled looking Hakyeon, his shirt twisted, like it had been pulled on in a hurry. “What?” he asked, very grumpily. “What is it?”   
  
“Are we interrupting something?” Hongbin asked, casually, although the undercurrent of amusement was still obvious in his voice.   
  
“What do you think?” Hakyeon snapped. Then he sighed, and seemed to visibly relax. “Come on in.”   
  
Wonshik followed Hongbin inside. Taekwoon was standing in the middle of the living room, shirtless, and looking about twice as intimidating as usual, which was saying something. He apparently minded the interruption about as much as Hakyeon did.   
  
“We didn’t mean to interrupt,” Hongbin said. He sounded perfectly serene. Wonshik wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted even more for Taekwoon to put a shirt on. “This probably could have waited.”   
  
“Well, you’re here now,” Hakyeon said. “What is it?”  
  
“It’s Sanghyuk, and Jaehwan,” Hongbin said. “Sanghyuk came by tonight, and, well— we think they’re still together after all.”   
  
“Well,” Wonshik interrupted, “they were never really together in the first place, so I don’t know if it’s accurate to say they’re _still_ together—”  
  
Hakyeon and Hongbin both whipped their heads around to give him the same death glare. He fell silent.   
  
“You said Jaehwan hadn’t been going to see Sanghyuk after— whatever the fuck happened, happened,” Hakyeon said. He sat down heavily on the couch, groaning, almost a little theatrically. “You said he was— was all sulky. What the hell is going on with them?”   
  
“Who knows, with those two,” Wonshik murmured. What Sanghyuk and Jaehwan had was— weird, for a lack of a better word. Wonshik, who knew all too well about a relationship with a fuck buddy turning into something more, didn’t understand anything about what Sanghyuk and Jaehwan had.  
  
“Well, I mean, Sanghyuk gave us some insight,” Hongbin said. “He— well. He said that in the two months Jaehwan was avoiding him, he’d been hooking up with other people. People other than his partner.”   
  
“Oh, yeah, I knew that. He told me quite a while ago,” Hakyeon said, and Wonshik frowned.  
  
“You could have told us that,” he muttered. “It’s probably why he’s been so grumpy lately.”   
  
“I honestly didn’t think about it. It’s not like Sanghyuk sleeping with someone other than Jaehwan is a recent development. I figured Jaehwan’s mood was more likely due to Sanghyuk chewing him out, or dumping him,” Hakyeon said glumly.  
  
“I think— it’s different, Sanghyuk sleeping with one other person regularly versus him having sex with people at random. He said Jaehwan isn’t good at sharing, and he’s right,” Wonshik said, mouth twisting. “But if he’s still sticking to their fuck buddy arrangement, he can’t exactly pull a fit to Sanghyuk’s face without looking like an asshole.”  
  
“Again,” Hongbin added for him helpfully.  
  
“Again,” Wonshik agreed. “But it doesn’t stop him moping about it behind the scenes.”   
  
Hakyeon put his head in his hands and groaned loudly. Taekwoon squeezed his shoulders in comfort. “I _want_ Jaehwan to throw tantrums, that way Sanghyuk _will_ actually kick him to the curb,” he said in despair.   
  
“Yeah, well, it can’t be helped,” Hongbin said. “If Jaehwan isn’t going to fess up to his feelings— then there’s nothing to be done, as of now. And Sanghyuk doesn’t seem to be any worse for the wear for it. I think he’s put his foot down, and Jaehwan, in turn, is still trying to fool himself into thinking he sees Sanghyuk as nothing more than a source of blood and sex.”  
  
“That won’t last forever,” Hakyeon muttered. “Eventually he’s going to snap.”  
  
“We’ll deal with that if or when it happens,” Hongbin said, and Hakyeon groaned again.  
  
“I just want this to be sorted,” he said.  
  
“At this point,” Wonshik pointed out, “it’s more of a problem with Jaehwan than with Sanghyuk. Sanghyuk is sticking to their deal, to a T, it would seem. He’s not in love with Jaehwan.”   
  
“Small mercies,” Hakyeon grumbled. “I wish they would stop this altogether.”  
  
“Jaehwan will not, not now that he is— emotionally invested, even if he is refusing to admit it. He’s addicted, at this point,” Taekwoon said softly.  
  
“You keep saying that,” Hakyeon mumbled.   
  
“There’s nothing we can do,” Hongbin said. “There’s never been anything we can do. That’s not why we came. We just— you told us to keep you informed, so here we are.”   
  
“I’m worried about Sanghyuk,” Hakyeon said softly. He leaned back on the couch, so that the top of his head rested against Taekwoon’s stomach behind him. “He never— he doesn’t bring this up with me much. His thing with Jaehwan, I mean.”  
  
“He doesn’t like us butting into his business,” Wonshik said. “That’s probably why he didn’t bother saying anything, after he and Jaehwan talked last. He never does think that what he and Jaehwan get up to is something we need to be concerned with.”   
  
“And he would be right,” Hongbin said, lips quirking into a smile, “if Jaehwan wasn’t going off the rails like he is.”   
  
“I really don’t like this,” Hakyeon said, mouth twisting.  
  
“There is nothing to be done,” Taekwoon told him, echoing Hongbin.   
  
Hakyeon smiled. “Yes, you keep telling me that too.”   
  
“Because it is true,” Taekwoon said.   
  
Hakyeon sighed and stood, rising smoothly to his feet. “It’ll be morning soon,” he said. “You two will never make it back in time.”   
  
“Yeah, we—” Wonshik glanced at Hongbin and then gave Hakyeon a sheepish smile. “We were hoping we would be able to crash here for the day.”   
  
Hakyeon muttered something which sounded like _cockblocked_. There was a slight hitch between Taekwoon’s eyebrows but he didn’t say anything, merely turned to get the spare blankets and pillows out of the cupboard where they were stored for nights just like this.   
  
Hakyeon was biting his lip, an oddly human gesture. Wonshik gripped his shoulders, forced him to look at him. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Sanghyuk is smart, and he’s strong. He can handle this, one way or another.”   
  
Hakyeon gave him a weak smile. “I really hope you’re right.”  
  
——  
  
It was odd, Sanghyuk thought how one could be worn down by an absence of events, instead of simply by abrasive events themselves.   
  
Jaehwan had stopped visiting him entirely. This wasn’t necessarily a tragedy per se, as he was free to visit Jaehwan himself whenever he chose, and when he did, Jaehwan fucked him just as he’d always done. Nothing about that had really changed, and yet something was definitely wrong, and it left Sanghyuk feeling wrong-footed and bereft.   
  
“You never come by my house anymore,” Sanghyuk murmured. His hair was mussed, limbs feeling heavy in the aftermath of orgasm. Jaehwan’s sheets were silky and cool against his skin.  
  
Jaehwan slid off his bed, smoothly pulling on a robe, face averted. “Busy,” he said, tone mild.  
  
Sanghyuk tried to remember that Jaehwan was dealing with _stuff_. But it was hard, when he had no idea what that stuff entailed. And he couldn’t ask, not really. That wasn’t what they had. “Alright,” he murmured, “but just— you’ve been acting really odd lately, Jaehwan.”   
  
“Have I?” Jaehwan asked as he padded towards the bathroom.  
  
“We never really talk, anymore,” Sanghyuk said, blinking slowly. “You’re obnoxious, but I’m starting to miss our banter. Are you angry at me, or just— preoccupied?”  
  
Jaehwan paused in the doorway to the bathroom to turn and look at him, an unreadable expression on his face. And then he was stepping inside, and the door was shutting softly.  
  
Sanghyuk sighed. It was odd indeed, how an absence of events could be so exhausting.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk thought, silently, that it was a little ironic that every time a hunter had a birthday, they inevitably held the celebration in a nightclub. They trolled these places on hunts, heaping scorn on the idiot teenagers and young adults who came at night to get drunk or high, and then at the first opportunity, chose to get drunk in those same places.   
  
Still, he wasn’t going to complain and infringe on the good time that everyone seemed to be having. He should try to have fun, he knew this. It was one of the trainee’s birthdays, a kid who Sanghyuk had never spoken a word to, but the invitation had included the entirety of HQ, and Sungjae and Ilhoon had dragged him along.   
  
“We never get to hang out with you outside of work anymore!” Ilhoon had complained, and had ignored Sanghyuk’s retort that there was a good reason for that.   
  
The two of them were dancing together, Ilhoon completely shameless, grinding against him in a way that felt more playful than anything else. He kept catching Sanghyuk’s eye and winking in an over exaggerated way and it made Sanghyuk laugh every time, some of the tension in him easing. He’d had a few beers by this point, and a couple of tequila shots that Sungjae had bought, and felt warm and fuzzy.   
  
Hyunsik made his way over to them, and Sanghyuk stepped back with a grin so he could take a turn dancing with Ilhoon. Sanghyuk might have grabbed Sungjae, then, but his partner had disappeared off somewhere.  
  
So instead Sanghyuk went back to the bar, pushing through the crowd. He perched himself on a stool and wondered if he should get another drink. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough, he thought, judging by the birthday boy, who was swaying his way around the edge of the club, practically tripping over thin air. One of the older hunters grabbed him and guided him to a chair, sat him down firmly in it, and then disappeared again.   
  
“Those young ones just can’t hold their alcohol,” said a voice at Sanghyuk’s side, and he looked up into the face of a young man, with bleached hair and a full mouth and ears full of piercings. He jerked his head at the birthday boy. “I saw him doing body shots.”   
  
“Well, that would explain it,” Sanghyuk said. The stranger was staring at him, flat out, without any trace of shame. “Can I help you?” Sanghyuk asked, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” the stranger blurted out, and Sanghyuk blushed a bit. “I’ll buy you a drink?”  
  
Sanghyuk nodded, lashes lowering, because why not. Maybe he’d feel better after getting royally drunk, maybe it would wash away some of the strange fog could he had hanging over him lately.   
  
It hadn’t worked yet, but maybe the dozenth time was the charm. And he had nothing to lose.  
  
——  
  
It took over an hour for Sanghyuk to stumble out of the club, and when he did it was out of the back door, into the narrow alleyway that ran behind the club. And he wasn’t alone.   
  
The man — ordinary human — shoved Sanghyuk up against the bricks of the building, and Sanghyuk went pliant, malleable in that way he got when he was drunk. His jaw was slack when the stranger kissed him, roughly, and he let the stranger unbuckle his jeans, let him slip his hand under his waistband—  
  
Sanghyuk cried out when he came, a lovely sound that echoed in the narrow alleyway. It echoed around in Jaehwan’s head too, and he bit into his own bottom lip so hard he drew blood.  
  
——  
  
Wonshik heard the shattering glass, near enough that the silencing charms couldn’t muffle it. He’d been heading to the living room, now he went through it, to the kitchen.  
  
“Hongbin?” he asked, as he walked into the kitchen.  
  
But it was Jaehwan, Jaehwan standing amidst shards of broken glass, glittering on the floor around him. He appeared to have dropped one of their wine glasses. One or two. He didn’t look at Wonshik.  
  
“Uh, you alright?” Wonshik asked. There was something very unsettling about the aura around Jaehwan at that moment.  
  
“Peachy,” Jaehwan said, staring down at the floor, like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “Perfect. Sublime.” He grabbed another glass, and, very carefully, dropped it. It fell for a split second then made an almost musical crash as it hit the marble, shining pieces scattering.   
  
“I like the sound it makes, it helps clear the mind,” Jaehwan said, simple, flat, and then grabbed another glass.  
  
Wonshik swallowed.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk found himself by the water cooler again.  
  
“I’m just— not feeling great lately,” Sanghyuk said as Ilhoon handed him two cups of water, and he spoke again before Ilhoon could say anything, “and I know you’re going to say sex cures all ails, Ilhoon, but I— I’m tired of going to nightclubs and waking up with roaring hangovers the next morning beside people who— I don’t know. I feel like every time I hook up with someone from a club it’s just _missing_ something.”  
  
Ilhoon’s eyes were unreadable as he stared at Sanghyuk. “Missing what?”  
  
Sanghyuk gave a one shouldered shrug. “Hell if I know,” he murmured.  
  
“And your— uh— fuck buddy is still not coming by?” Ilhoon said, and Sanghyuk could tell he was trying to be tactful. Sanghyuk shook his head. “Maybe you need to find another one. Maybe you just— need something other than one night flings.”  
  
“I—” Sanghyuk started, then stopped. “Maybe.”  
  
“You could look online, all the cool kids are doing it,” Ilhoon said, and then grinned when Sanghyuk glared at him. “Or you could go to a pub. That way you can actually talk to the person and hopefully will be able to resist getting terribly drunk.”  
  
Sanghyuk took that advice, just to see what it would be like. He found pubs had a different sort of clientele, a little older, a lot more pretentious.   
  
It took him a few ventures into various places, but then he met Taehyun.  
  
Taehyun was a bit older than Sanghyuk, but he didn’t look it. He had a job as an accountant, which sounded boring, but he also greatly enjoyed horror movies, which took Sanghyuk by surprise and made him think he couldn’t be as dull as he’d initially thought. But Taehyun was painfully normal, which maybe Sanghyuk needed, even if Taehyun seemed to think himself avant garde. Their first meeting he had bought Sanghyuk a _pint_ , for fuck’s sake, and while Sanghyuk had initially been fairly uninterested, he’d been somewhat charmed as the night wore on. They’d talked for several hours, which was new, for Sanghyuk, before going back to Taehyun’s flat, a surprisingly nice place for someone so young. He wasn’t stellar in bed, but he was smart, well-educated, and in his mid-twenties. He’d slipped Sanghyuk his number, and Sanghyuk decided to actually keep it.   
  
Sanghyuk thought maybe Ilhoon was onto something, that it might be nice, to have someone on call, someone besides Jaehwan, someone who wasn’t Sungjae. It might be nice to have sex with someone who wasn’t a stranger, someone who Sanghyuk knew, had a repertoire with. Especially since Jaehwan had been acting so— so wrong with him. Sanghyuk missed him, sometimes, and he hated admitting that. They still saw each other, on the few nights Sanghyuk would drive out there, but he hadn’t done that in a while. Jaehwan had been fucking Sanghyuk like— like it was a duty, almost, their interactions so surface it was like they were almost strangers themselves.   
  
He was beginning to wonder if Jaehwan had grown bored, or simply tired of not being able to control Sanghyuk. The thought stung.  
  
So Sanghyuk had a lot of time on his hands, and in that time he called Taehyun, a few nights after meeting him, and then a few nights after that as well.   
  
Taehyun, unfortunately, several sessions and weeks later, seemed to think he and Sanghyuk were, well, were skirting around _dating_. Sanghyuk wasn’t opposed to the idea per se, but he didn’t really know if he had the patience to even bother, had the spare mental capacity right now.  
  
“Come on,” Taehyun murmured one night, when Sanghyuk was snuggled down on Taehyun’s ridiculously large king bed. “Or is the thought of hanging out with me so horrible?”  
  
Sanghyuk wrinkled his nose. “I just don’t date, really.”  
  
“Seeing one movie won’t mean we’re dating, Sanghyuk,” Taehyun said, laughing.   
  
It was an activity that wasn’t sex though, and Sanghyuk sighed. But maybe— maybe he should try. Maybe some normalcy would be good for him. Maybe it would fill the mysterious void. “Fine,” he said. “I’m free next friday.”  
  
——  
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sungjae asked, looking at him skeptically.   
  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sanghyuk muttered. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Just drop it, would you?”   
  
Sungjae held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Fine, okay, I’ll drop it. Sheesh.”   
  
Sanghyuk ignored him. Sungjae had been niggling at him for most of their shift together, wanting to know why Sungjae looked so grumpy, why he was so snappy, what had happened. He didn’t seem to make the connection between his questions and Sanghyuk’s mood further darkening. Sungjae was like a dog with a bone, and the mystery of Sanghyuk’s Bad Mood needed to be solved. He wasn’t going to drop it.   
  
There was no real mystery about it, it was a combination of factors. Work, the Jaehwan Situation, the stupid fucking date thing he’d agreed to the night after tomorrow. And to top it off he hadn’t been sleeping well. He’d been restless of late, and nothing helped. Not working until exhaustion, not sex. No matter how sleepy he was when he laid down, he just couldn’t stop his mind from buzzing. It was getting old fast.  
  
“But seriously,” Sungjae said, not fucking dropping it, “what happened?”   
  
“Oh my god!” Sanghyuk exploded, rounding on him. “Nothing happened! I’m okay, I’m just tired, I didn’t sleep very well, leave me alone!”   
  
Sungjae blinked at him. “Oh.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “Didn’t sleep very well as in…?”   
  
“No, you dumb shit,” Sanghyuk said, feeling a spark of amusement at that. “As in, I couldn’t sleep. Nothing else going on. And I swear, your ability to turn everything back to sex is—” He broke off suddenly, as his tattoos started pinging out distress signals at him.   
  
“Admirable? A sign of my latent intelligence? My—” Sungjae broke off. “Oh, shit, you feel that?”  
  
“Of course I feel that,” Sanghyuk hissed. “There’s— two, there’s two.”   
  
“You’re sure?” Sungjae asked. “Because I don’t want to get ambushed by more than that.”   
  
“I’m sure,” Sanghyuk said, hushed. “Just— keep walking, okay, just keep acting normally.” He could feel them now, the one in the alley just ahead of them, the one trying to sneak up behind them, moving closer at a speed which suggested it was doing that creepy thing where it moved through the shadows like it _was_ one. Sanghyuk had seen Wonshik doing that one time and the thought of it still made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.   
  
If it hadn’t been two of them, he might have almost thought it was Jaehwan again. But two vampires, coming up on them from different sides, suggested ambush. His hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger in his pocket, his sunburst tattoo burning hot, right before a hand grabbed him by the shoulder, to try to yank him backwards.   
  
His wards went off, hard and strong. The vampire who had grabbed him went down with a scream and Sanghyuk was on it in a moment, knife flashing in the light of the street lamp as he stabbed it right in the heart. The whole thing took mere seconds.   
  
Sungjae was staring at him, wide eyed and pale. “Sanghyuk—”   
  
“I told you, there’s _two_!” Sanghyuk shouted, distracted just for a moment, but that was time enough for the other vampire to appear out of the darkness and launch itself — himself — at him, tackling Sanghyuk to the ground so hard that he almost, just almost, lost his grip on his weapon.   
  
His wards had gone off again, sending a rippling burst of energy through him, but the momentum of the tackle meant that when they landed, the vampire was still on top of him, though it was howling in pain and anger.   
  
The vamp’s weight pinned him down and Sanghyuk felt him bite down against his shoulder, fangs sinking into the leather of his jacket. For a moment, Sanghyuk almost lost his head, almost— but then he brought his hands up, both hands around the hilt now, and drove it into the vampire’s back, again and again until he hit the heart, and the vamp went utterly limp.   
  
A moment later the body was pulled off of him and Sanghyuk lay there, staring straight up, trying to catch his breath. His entire body was thrumming with adrenaline, not all of it the good kind that he associated with a hunt that had been pulled off well. Most of it was fear, the realisation that something had gone wrong there, that it could have gone _wrong_.   
  
He almost retched, his stomach churning, but he managed not to, managed to hold onto himself. He sat up, although he was shaking so hard that he wished he had just stayed down. Sungjae had pulled the body alongside the other one, and Sanghyuk could see now that they were a male and female pair. Perhaps lovers. That would explain why the male one had gone for him, and not Sungjae, who had been a sitting duck.   
  
“Sanghyuk,” Sungjae said, in a small voice, “I’m so sorry—”  
  
“You _fucking idiot_ ,” Sanghyuk rasped out. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have gotten us both killed.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” Sungjae repeated, this time in a whisper. “I just—”  
  
“What the fuck happened?” Sanghyuk asked, struggling to his feet. He had seen Sungjae kill before, had never seen him freeze up like that. He was a decent hunter, had the potential to be a good hunter. But good hunters didn’t mess up like that, because it was liable to be the last thing they did.  
  
“I got scared,” Sungjae mumbled. He had his face turned away, looking at the vampires laying side by side slumped up against a nearby building. Sanghyuk looked down at himself and saw his front splashed with blood. His hands were coated with it.  
  
“Scared of what? Scared of them?” He motioned at the vampires, already dead.  
  
“No,” Sungjae said. He turned his face to Sanghyuk, and he was pale, shaken. “Scared of you.”   
  
Sanghyuk stared at him. He wished he had something he could wipe his hands off on, the blood starting to dry stickily between his fingers. “Scared of me? Why?”   
  
“I’ve never seen anyone move like that,” Sungjae said. “I didn’t even— for a moment it was like you weren’t human, you moved so fast, almost before the vampire even grabbed you. I just— for a moment, I just forgot about the other one, I barely even knew what I was seeing—”   
  
“You can’t just _forget_ ,” Sanghyuk said. “Christ, Sungjae, you’re lucky that one went for me because otherwise it would have killed you—”   
  
“I have my wards,” Sungjae mumbled.  
  
“That’s not the _point_.” Sanghyuk was still shaking, almost juddering with it. “You can’t just let your wards do the work for you, you can’t just let your guard down. Vampires are stronger than we know, they can be so fast— what if he had been an Elimia, what then?”   
  
“If he’d been an Elimia,” Sungjae said, “then we’d both be dead regardless of what I had done.”   
  
Sanghyuk slumped. He couldn’t do this, didn’t know how to get this through. “Leave those,” he said, turning his back on the fallen vamps. “Come on, let’s go back to HQ. I can’t— I need to— come on.”   
  
Sungjae followed behind him all the way back to HQ, not speaking a single word. By the time they got there, Sanghyuk felt calmer, his hands no longer shaking by his sides. When he pushed his way into the building, Sungjae brushed past him and disappeared into the offices to their right.   
  
Sanghyuk paused, letting the wards which covered HQ seal him in, keeping him safe. He had been more scared than he could remember being for a long time. But it hadn’t, he knew, been because of anything he had done. He had, up until Sungjae had frozen, been sure, confident of his abilities. He had dispatched of his vampire quickly and easily and would have been able to do the same with the other one, if he hadn’t been distracted.   
  
This, this was just— one thing too many.  
  
He heard voices, laughing, from the left, coming closer, and that was enough to knock him out of the trance he seemed to be standing in. He took the stairs quickly, two at a time every so often, his feet carrying him to a place which his head hadn’t consciously made a decision to go to. He was still figuring out what he was going to say, and how he was going to say it, when he was knocking on Kris’s office door.   
  
“Come in,” Kris called.   
  
Sanghyuk opened the door and stepped into the room. It looked exactly the same as it had done the last time he had been in here. Kris was sitting at his desk, apparently working through some paperwork. He looked up to see who had just come through the door and his movement was arrested as sharply as any vampire Sanghyuk had seen.  
  
Sanghyuk shut the door behind him. “Sanghyuk,” Kris said, in a decidedly disconcerted voice. “I— I didn’t expect to see you.”   
  
“Yeah, I—” Sanghyuk shrugged. He still hadn’t quite worked out what he was going to say, and, truth be told, Kris still intimidated him immensely. Sanghyuk had gone to great lengths over the last several months to avoid coming to Kris’s attention. He had been under suspicion enough, thanks to his mentors. “I need to talk to you, I know it’s unexpected.”  
  
“No, it’s not that,” Kris said. He half-rose to his feet, looking unsure. “It’s just, is any of that blood yours?”   
  
Sanghyuk glanced down at himself. He had somehow managed to forget the blood which had soaked into his clothing, sitting against his skin. “No, it’s not, I killed two vamps tonight.”   
  
Kris raised an eyebrow as he sat back down. “Impressive work.”   
  
“Not really,” Sanghyuk said. He wanted to sit down, wanted nothing more than to collapse into one of the chairs in front of Kris’s desk, but if he did that, they would still be washing the blood out of it in a week. “It was messy. I’m lucky to be alive.”  
  
Kris, perhaps sensing the same problem Sanghyuk did, didn’t ask him to sit. “What happened?”   
  
“Sungjae froze,” Sanghyuk said. “I’d told him there were two vamps, but after he watched me kill the first one, he just froze, he completely forgot where he was. I was distracted by him, and that let the other one catch me off guard. It tackled me to the ground. I managed to kill it before it could hurt me but — it was close. If I hadn’t had my jacket on, if I had lost my grip on my knife...” He let himself trail off.  
  
Kris was silent for a few seconds. “Did Sungjae tell you why he froze?”   
  
Sanghyuk pressed his lips together. For some reason, he didn’t want to tell Kris that. It felt too much like tattling, in many ways. “He’s not losing it, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s going to be a good hunter, Kris, he is, but he needs more guidance.”   
  
“I feel like you’re leading up to a point,” Kris said, “so perhaps you should make it.”   
  
“I can’t be that guidance,” Sanghyuk said bluntly. “In fact, I just simply won’t be that guidance. In our partnership, I’m the lead, but I feel like in many cases, I’m simply— doing all the work. Which doesn’t help him learn, doesn’t help him grow. He needs to be paired with someone who has more experience, who has the patience to teach him. I don’t have that patience. And I care about him too much. Right now, he’s more of a distraction to me on the field than anything else.”  
  
“You don’t want Sungjae to be your partner anymore? Do you have someone else in mind?”  
  
“I don’t _want_ a partner,” Sanghyuk said forcefully. “I don’t have the time to teach Sungjae, and I don’t have the time to be constantly paying attention to what my partner is doing. I can’t be watching their back. I don’t want to be constantly distracted by having to protect someone.”   
  
Kris was watching him carefully, intently. He didn’t seem even remotely surprised by this. “You know,” he said, “not even Hakyeon was allowed to go out by himself. We have hunters go out in pairs for a very good reason, Sanghyuk.”   
  
“I know. But in a situation where I can’t protect myself, I’m not sure how much help another hunter is going to be, especially if I’m distracted trying to look after them. I need to work on my own, Kris.”   
  
“You are a good hunter,” Kris said. “From what I’ve heard you are well on your way to being easily as good a hunter as Hakyeon ever was. That does not, however, make me more inclined to approve this. I don’t like it.”   
  
“Well, it’s pretty much tough,” Sanghyuk told him. “Either you approve this, you let Sungjae partner up with someone who will actually bring out his full potential, and let me live up to mine, or I’ll leave and be a freelance hunter, one who doesn’t have to answer to you or this organisation.”   
  
Kris did look surprised at that. He sat back in his chair, regarding Sanghyuk thoughtfully. Sanghyuk knew that the last thing Kris wanted was a hunter out there who wasn’t working along any rules or guidelines, a rogue. It was the biggest reason they had made sure to recruit Hakyeon all those years ago — the fact that he had been the best had just sweetened it for HQ.   
  
“Fine,” Kris said. “Fine, I’ll see if any of the senior hunters is willing to be Sungjae’s partner. And fine, you can be solo. But I want you to still go out in pairs sometimes. You need some accountability, Sanghyuk. I don’t want you going off the rails.” There was an unspoken _like Hakyeon did at the end_.   
  
“Okay,” said Sanghyuk, slowly nodding his head. “I’ll agree to that.”   
  
“Go home, Sanghyuk,” Kris said, waving a tired hand at him. “Go home, take a shower, get some rest. Tomorrow I want you working at your desk. Just relax, okay?”   
  
“Don’t worry,” Sanghyuk muttered, turning for the door. “I plan on it.”   
  
He left Kris’s office just as Sungjae came down the hallway towards it. Sungjae stopped, staring at him, eyes full of trepidation. He had washed, presumably in the bathroom, and now the only blood on him was the little bit that had gotten on his shirt.   
  
“Sanghyuk,” he said, and then, in a rush; “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t be angry with me, I genuinely didn’t mean to freeze up—”   
  
Sanghyuk felt his mouth twitch, and he gave Sungjae a smile. Fuck, he felt exhausted suddenly. “Sungjae, I’m not even mad. It just— it happened. You made a mistake. It happens.”   
  
Sungjae’s gaze flicked towards Kris’s office, then back to Sanghyuk. “Why were you talking to Kris?”   
  
“I—” Sanghyuk hesitated, feeling more awkward than he thought he would be. This felt a little like deja vu. “I asked him to terminate our partnership.”   
  
Sungjae jerked like Sanghyuk had hit him. “What? Why, you said you weren’t mad—”   
  
“I’m not, Sungjae, I’m not. But that’s not the point. The point is that our partnership isn’t working anymore. We’re supposed to be helping each other, making up for each other’s weak points, and it’s just not working like that.”   
  
Something flashed across Sungjae’s face. “What you mean is that you’re too good for me.”   
  
“That’s not what I mean at all,” Sanghyuk said gently. “Look, Sungjae, you need someone who can guide you and teach you, and you’re not learning anything like that from me, because I don’t know how to teach what I know. I’m stifling you, not helping you. I’m not a mentor.”   
  
“I can learn from you,” Sungjae argued. “I _have_ learned from you.”   
  
“I said that we all have weak points, well, my weakness is that I get too easily distracted by the need to protect the people around me, and that includes you. Even though you can protect yourself, I’m still too aware, always, of where you are, what you’re doing. Because I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said softly, and Sungjae turned a little red. “I can’t be like that in the field. I need to work solo.”   
  
Sungjae blinked. “But no one works solo.”   
  
“I do. Kris just approved it.”   
  
“And he didn’t ask me?”  
  
“I didn’t really give him much choice,” Sanghyuk admitted. Sungjae looked unsure. “Look, Sungjae, I’m exhausted, I think I’m about to pass out. And I’m covered in blood, I need a shower. Can we talk about this tomorrow? I promise we will.”   
  
Sungjae nodded, his mouth pressed shut in a tight line. Sanghyuk gave him a grateful smile as he walked past, Sungjae stepping aside to give him a wide berth, presumably because of the blood. Sanghyuk had just started climbing the stairs when he heard Sungjae call his name, rapid footsteps as Sungjae ran to catch up with him.   
  
“I—” Sungjae shifted from side to side. “Are you sure you’re not doing this because you’re angry?”   
  
“I promise you,” Sanghyuk said firmly, his smile a little stronger now. “I’m not doing this because I’m angry.”   
  
Sanghyuk leaned over, careful of his bloody hands, and kissed Sungjae softly on the cheek before turning to leave again.


	4. Chapter 4

When Sanghyuk arrived at the park, Hakyeon and Taekwoon were already there, standing by the edge of the lake. Hakyeon had a couple of slices of bread in his hands, but seeing as it was dark, there were no ducks actually out on the water.   
  
“Seriously?” Sanghyuk asked, motioning to the bread.   
  
“Taekwoon has been sad about the ducks being scared of him,” Hakyeon said, without turning around. Although Sanghyuk had, to all extents and purposes, snuck up behind him, he didn’t seem remotely surprised. Sanghyuk felt like he could do with those vampire reflexes sometimes.   
  
“I have not,” Taekwoon said, softly, but very obviously firmly. Hakyeon turned his head a little and Sanghyuk saw his smile in profile, and realised that that obviously wasn’t the reason they had the bread, and that he probably just didn’t need to know said reason.   
  
“We really were just trying to feed the ducks,” Hakyeon said, turning now to face Sanghyuk. “But they appear to be all asleep.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Sanghyuk said, a little confused. “It’s like, one in the morning. Most everything is asleep at this point.”   
  
“I wanted to feed the ducks,” Hakyeon said, a slight whine in his voice.   
  
“You’re so annoying,” Sanghyuk said, smiling to take the sting out of his words. “How does Taekwoon put up with you?”   
  
“He had practise dealing with Jaehwan,” said a voice to their side. “I can tell you from experience that even Hakyeon is bearable after Jaehwan.”   
  
“Wonshik, shut up,” Hakyeon snapped.  
  
Wonshik sauntered up to them, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. Hongbin was trailing along after him, a heavy looking camera slung around his neck. “Sorry we’re late,” Wonshik said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at Hongbin. “This guy got distracted by some buildings that he had to photograph.”   
  
“We came by a different way,” Hongbin explained. “We passed a bunch of stuff I don’t even remember noticing when I was a human.” He gave a soft, wistful smile. “I would have liked to photograph them in the daylight, but obviously that’s not possible.”   
  
“I would like to see your photographs sometime,” Sanghyuk said sincerely.   
  
Hongbin looked a little surprised, but pleased. “I can show you sometime,” he said, almost shyly. “I’m not great, so I wouldn’t expect anything special. It’s just something I enjoy doing.”   
  
“He’s too modest,” Wonshik said. “He’s really great.”   
  
That may have been so, but considering Wonshik’s tendency to view everything Hongbin did through rose-tinted glasses, Sanghyuk decided to withhold his judgement until he could see Hongbin’s talent for himself.   
  
Hakyeon sat down on a bench, sliding his hands under his thighs to sit on them. “Sanghyuk,” he said, his gaze soft as he looked at Sanghyuk. “What is it that you wanted to talk to us about?”   
  
“Um,” said Sanghyuk, as everyone turned to watch him. His wards tittered a little in discomfort, which racked his heart rate up; it was a decidedly creepy things to have four vampires watching him so intently at the exact same time. “I— a couple of— god!” he snapped. “Could you all stop looking at me like that? It’s making me feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.”   
  
Wonshik cracked up. “Sorry, kiddo, we’ll try to tone it down.”   
  
“Right, well,” Sanghyuk said, taking a deep breath. “A couple of nights ago, I was out on patrol with Sungjae when we got ambushed by two vamps. I killed the first one, but Sungjae— he froze.”   
  
“Is he okay?” Hakyeon asked sharply. Sanghyuk nodded silently. “Was he scared of the vamps?” It wasn’t unusual in the new hunters to be afraid enough to freeze, but those new hunters usually either left or were killed before they could become anything like old hunters.  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, shaking his head firmly. “Scared of _me_.”   
  
Hongbin’s eyebrows rose. “Scared of his partner? That’s never a good sign.”   
  
“He almost got us both killed. The other one got close enough to bite me, but it only got my jacket, so I was okay, in the end. But I don’t— I’d been thinking about it for a while, but what happened just proved what I already suspected. Having a partner is more distracting for me, something which takes away from my hunting. I went to Kris afterwards and asked for him to cancel my partnership with Sungjae. I’m now a solo hunter.”   
  
Stunned silence greeted his words. Wonshik was the first to break it. “Solo— that’s _insane_.”  
  
“No one hunts solo,” Hongbin said, almost fretfully. “It’s a surefire way to get yourself killed.”   
  
“That’s not true,” Sanghyuk protested. “Hakyeon hunted solo before he was recruited by HQ.”   
  
“And I was damned lucky I didn’t die,” Hakyeon retorted, though he seemed remarkably calm, sitting still on the bench. His eyes were steady as he looked at Sanghyuk, and surprisingly empty of reproach. “It’s not really a sensible thing to do.”   
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk said, completely truthfully. “I know that a partner can help in a bad situation. But for me, bad situations seem to happen _more_ when I have a partner around. I get too focused on what they’re doing, whether they’re okay. I need to be completely focused on the _kill_. Otherwise, what’s the point?”   
  
Wonshik was still frowning. “I don’t like it.”  
  
“I’m not asking you to like it,” Sanghyuk said, exasperated. “You don’t have to, it’s already done. You’re not my mentor anymore,” he added, teasingly.   
  
“He has a point,” Hongbin said. Wonshik looked thoroughly put out by it all.   
  
Sanghyuk turned to Hakyeon. “You’re being strangely quiet.”   
  
Hakyeon’s smile was fond. “I already knew something like this would happen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, but I never doubted it.”   
  
“How— I mean.” Wonshik sounded utterly confused. “No offence, kid, but you weren’t exactly top of the class in training. How could you possibly survive without a partner?”   
  
“You never got to see him on the field,” Hakyeon said, saving Sanghyuk from speaking and potentially having to talk himself up. “He was no good in training because it was too fake. He needs the thrill of the hunt to really shine. You must remember that time we told you he killed those two vamps. His _first_ kill.”   
  
“I thought—” Wonshik broke off and muttered something under his breath, too quiet for Sanghyuk to hear.  
  
“It was _not_ a fluke,” Hakyeon said. Hongbin laughed and Sanghyuk sent an amused look at Wonshik, who looked suitably sheepish. “He’s a good hunter, Wonshik. I’ll admit that I don’t like the idea of him going solo either, but it’s not really up to us.”   
  
“But even you— after you joined HQ, you didn’t go solo. You had me, and Hongbin.”   
  
“Yes, but you two kept me grounded, you kept me from going off the rails again,” Hakyeon said. “I needed the system to give me a framework to work within. Sanghyuk is a tighter hunter than I ever was, more focused. He’s certainly a lot less angry.”   
  
“I just wanted you to know,” Sanghyuk said, interrupting what he thought was likely to be a full scale argument. He hadn’t left one family behind just to watch his surrogate parents bicker over him. “Not to scare you, or to make you worry. Just to keep you updated.”   
  
There was a long pause before Wonshik sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Like you said, there’s nothing I can do about it. But, kid, just be careful, okay?”   
  
“I’m always careful,” Sanghyuk said with a grin, which wasn’t always true, but Wonshik didn’t need to know that.   
  
“Does Jaehwan know about this?” Hakyeon asked. He sounded rather tentative.   
  
Sanghyuk scowled. “No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to know. He’s been weird lately, not coming around, and before that he wasn’t really talking to me anyway. So I figure there’s no point. He doesn’t care about me or my life anyway, so long as I’m still willing to suck his dick at the end of the day.”  
  
Wonshik and Hongbin exchanged looks and Hakyeon coughed, disgruntled. Sanghyuk should probably have felt some sort of shame, but he didn’t, so that was that. Sanghyuk glanced at his phone, checking the time since he wouldn’t be able to see his watch face in this light. “I’d better go,” he said. “I have the early morning shift to try to get some paperwork done. Plus I’m kind of avoiding Sungjae,” he added sheepishly.  
  
“He’s not taking it well?” Hakyeon asked, standing and immediately was folded into Taekwoon’s arms.   
  
“He’s— hurt, obviously. He thinks it’s a slight on his abilities, but obviously it’s not. Sometimes people just work in different ways, you know?”   
  
“Mmm,” mumbled Hakyeon. “Yeah, I know.”   
  
——  
  
The sun was an hour from rising before Wonshik and Hongbin arrived home. They had lingered outside for a long time, Wonshik waiting patiently while Hongbin took photos with the special equipment they had procured for him to be able to take photos at night with. Wonshik was pleased to see him so happy, so engrossed in a hobby. For a few moments, every time they went out to take photos like this, Wonshik almost forgot what they were.  
  
Almost.  
  
“Do you really think Sanghyuk should be doing this?” Wonshik asked, stepping into the house.   
  
A quick glance at Hongbin’s face showed him looking unsure, biting his bottom lip. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “It’s dangerous, of course it is, but—”  
  
Jaehwan came slinking out of the shadows of the living room. Hongbin fell silent immediately, almost looking fearful; they hadn’t wanted Jaehwan to know about this, couldn’t know what his reaction was going to be. He looked furious, and when he spoke, his voice had taken on that certain silky quality that he only ever used at his most poisonous.   
  
“What is Sanghyuk doing that is dangerous _this_ time?”   
  
Hongbin looked at Wonshik, who was as disinclined to answer as anyone could be. Jaehwan had been somewhat volatile these last few weeks. The last thing Wonshik wanted was another breakdown on his hands.   
  
Jaehwan turned to Wonshik, eyes terrifyingly intense. “Tell me,” he said, and there was something in incredibly commanding in his voice, something which Wonshik was powerless to resist.   
  
“Sanghyuk has split up with Sungjae as his hunting partner,” he found himself saying, his mouth ignoring his concentrated efforts to get it to stop. “He’s going to be hunting solo from now on.”   
  
For a moment, Jaehwan seemed so shocked, he didn’t know what to say. He looked between Wonshik and Hongbin like he suspected that this would turn out to be some sort of joke. But of course, he knew that it couldn’t possibly be.   
  
“He’s going to hunt _solo_ ,” he repeated, tone incredulous. “Is— is he an idiot? No, scratch that, is he _suicidal_?”   
  
Hongbin winced. “Jaehwan—”  
  
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Jaehwan said. “He— how are you letting him do this?”   
  
“We can’t stop him,” Hongbin said. “He’s an adult who can make his own decisions. He’s a good hunter and—”   
  
“Being a good hunter doesn’t mean jack shit,” Jaehwan said harshly. “Just look at how well that worked out for _you_ , Crazy.”   
  
“Hey,” said Wonshik angrily, taking a step forward, “there’s no need for—”  
  
He broke off as Hongbin’s hand fastened around his wrist. He looked back to find Hongbin shaking his head, a tired smile on his face. “Leave it,” he said, before turning his attention to Jaehwan. “What are _you_ going to do about it?”   
  
“I’m going to tell him he’s an idiot, and forbid him from doing something so utterly foolish,” Jaehwan snapped.  
  
“So you’re going to boss him around,” Wonshik said. “You know he hates that.”  
  
Jaehwan frowned, glancing away. “He may hate it, but I won’t allow this.”  
  
“He won’t listen to you, if he didn’t listen to us.” Wonshik couldn’t keep the frustration out of his voice.  
  
“Then I’ll have to find another way to keep him safe,” Jaehwan muttered, almost to himself.  
  
Hongbin was terse when he spoke. “What are you going to do?”  
  
“Whatever I have to,” Jaehwan whispered, still looking away.  
  
Hongbin tugged on Wonshik’s wrist. “Come on,” he said, looking and sounding thoroughly disgusted. He pulled Wonshik out of the room, leaving Jaehwan standing there. He didn’t seem to notice that they had left, or that anything had changed. He was staring blankly into space, apparently deep in thought.  
  
Once they were safely encased in the silencing charms in the hallway, Wonshik said, in an undertone just in case, “What do you think he’s going to do?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Hongbin said. He sounded somewhat angry. “Something stupid, no doubt.”   
  
——  
  
Taehyun, it turned out, had terrible taste in movies.  
  
Sanghyuk smothered a yawn as they walked down the sidewalk away from the movie theatre. Beside him, Taehyun was nattering away happily about how interesting the movie had been, how scary this part had been, how _symbolic_ everything in the final scene had been.  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t know about that. It had, after all, merely been a B grade horror flick, more screaming women and axe murderers than deep symbolism. Sanghyuk couldn’t even remember anything about the movie; he was fairly certain he had fallen asleep somewhere in the middle and woke up only when he heard what he thought might have been Taehyun screaming beside him.   
  
“It was so scary,” Taehyun said, for the hundredth time, hand over his heart, like it was still pounding.   
  
“Mmm,” Sanghyuk hummed, in a non-committal way.   
  
Taehyun slid him a sideways look. “You weren’t scared?”   
  
It was pretty hard to scared of an axe murderer stalking a group of college students in an abandoned wood cabin in a forest, when he made his living killing vampires. Sanghyuk was not a college student, and he never went out into the middle of the forest, wood cabin or not. He was unlikely, therefore, to meet an axe murderer. Vampires, on the other hand, were a far more pressing danger.   
  
“It was alright,” Sanghyuk said, since he couldn’t say any of that.   
  
“You’re not fazed by anything, are you?” Taehyun asked. He sounded mostly amused.   
  
Sanghyuk shrugged. “I just don’t find movies scary, you know? There’s a formula to them, and once you know the formula, you always know when the next supposedly scary thing is coming. There are very few good horror movies, in my opinion.”   
  
Taehyun was silent for a few seconds, their footsteps as they walked the only sound between them. It was dark, now, the sun had set while they were in the movie theatre, and there were very few people around, and even fewer cars. Anyone who was out appeared to be a couple.   
  
“I’m a bit embarrassed now,” Taehyun said eventually.  
  
“Don’t be,” Sanghyuk said, smiling at him. “I’m a bit of a weird case.”   
  
“I can see what you mean, though. It’s— you know, I always thought it was a shame that there are all those laws against portraying vampires on television and in movies. That’s how you would get a really great horror movie. We would need to have vampires in it.”   
  
“Putting vampires in movies would be glamorizing them,” Sanghyuk said. “It would make people more likely to want to go out and become one.” There was just the slightest bite of sarcasm in his voice. He was paraphrasing something that he had read in a VCF leaflet that he had picked up in high school, and it sounded just as ridiculous now as it had when he had first read it.   
  
“We just watched a movie about an axe murderer,” Taehyun pointed out, “and I don’t see either of us running out to kill someone with an axe, do you?”   
  
“The night is still young,” Sanghyuk said serenely.   
  
“Ah, that it is,” Taehyun said. He stopped and took Sanghyuk’s hand, tugging him back a couple of steps. “The night is young and so are we.”   
  
“This sounds like a line,” Sanghyuk said.   
  
“You know there’s websites online where they make vampire porn?” Taehyun asked. “Of course, it’s not with real vampires, but it’s pretty— interesting.”   
  
_Yeah, I know_ , Sanghyuk didn’t say. _I’ve seen one._  
  
“I’ve always wanted to try that,” Taehyun said.   
  
“What?” Sanghyuk asked, eyebrow arching in surprise. “Having sex with a vampire?”   
  
Taehyun burst into laughter. “No, _roleplaying_.”   
  
“Oh,” said Sanghyuk. He was struggling to hold back his own laughter, struggling so hard he thought he was going to hurt some internal organ. “That’s a new one.”   
  
“It would really easy to do, if you got those fake fangs they sell in the costume stores at Halloween. The ones you glue in, I mean, not those shitty glow in the dark ones, I wouldn’t want to have sex with those in.”   
  
“You’ve clearly thought a lot about this,” Sanghyuk said.  
  
“You haven’t thought about it before?”  
  
“Um,” Sanghyuk said. This was not a conversation he was ready to have.  
  
Taehyun put his hand on Sanghyuk’s hip, and started backing him up, until Sanghyuk was pressed against the wall of a nearby bakery. The hand not on Sanghyuk’s hip braced itself on the wall next to Sanghyuk’s ear. He was taller, which was unusual, and his attempts at looking sexy and alluring came out a little more like leering.   
  
“I’ve thought about it,” Taehyun said, voice husky. “I know it’s weird, it’s— you’re probably going to tell me I’m crazy, but I’ve thought about what it would be like, to have you bite me, your teeth sinking into my skin—”  
  
This was utterly fucking surreal.   
  
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Sanghyuk managed to get out, before he stopped Taehyun from saying anything more by yanking him closer and kissing him.  
  
This was pleasant, at least, and if Sanghyuk got a round of somewhat decent sex out of the night’s proceedings, it wouldn’t be a total waste. There had been points, in that movie, where he had wished that he was actually at work instead.   
  
Taehyun moaned into his mouth and slid his knee between Sanghyuk’s thighs, pressing close. He was hard, his cock obvious in his jeans, and Sanghyuk thought that maybe he should be too, but then again, he wasn’t, so. It felt like too much, to get hard on the street like this. He wanted to be taken home and fucked in a bed, preferably Taehyun’s, since his bed was bigger and softer—  
  
There was a ripple along his wards, and he jerked his head away, breaking the kiss. He twisted his head to the side, trying to see where the feeling was coming from, but could see nothing, could only sense that the vampire was getting closer.   
  
“What is it?” Taehyun asked. He began kissing down Sanghyuk’s neck, his teeth scraping ever so slightly.   
  
“Nothing,” Sanghyuk said, unsure how to explain how he knew, and then; “I can feel—”   
  
Something dropped to the ground beside them, out of the light of the streetlamps, apparently having stepped off the rooftop of the bakery they were currently pressed up against. Taehyun stepped away from him, his hand still against his hip, his brow furrowed in confusion. Then the something straightened, taking on the appearance of a man, and it grinned. Its fangs glinted bright in the moonlight.   
  
“Boo,” it said.  
  
“Shit,” said Taehyun. Then louder; “Shit!” And his hand left Sanghyuk’s hip as he turned and fled down the street, back towards the movie theatre. He didn’t look back, didn’t pause to see if Sanghyuk was there behind him, simply disappeared around a corner and was gone.   
  
Sanghyuk watched him go, jaw dropped as disbelief welled up inside of him, and then he turned his head, glaring at the apparition of the night who had just materialised out of the darkness.   
  
“Jaehwan,” he said through gritted teeth, “you fucking _dickhead_.”   
  
Jaehwan had stepped closer, into the light from the streetlamps, and he was snickering, arms folded across his chest. “Hello, love,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”   
  
“Fancy—” Sanghyuk lost it. The urge to pull out his dagger and stab Jaehwan with it was nearly impossible to ignore. “You knew I was here, you asshole.”   
  
“To assume makes an ass of you and me,” Jaehwan said in a sing-song voice.   
  
“Oh, so I’m supposed to believe that of all the people you chose to gatecrash, you just happened to pick me and my— friend?”   
  
“Was that your friend?” Jaehwan asked, scratching at his face idly. “He certainly can run fast, can’t he.”   
  
“You manipulative asswipe,” Sanghyuk growled. “You can’t be all distant and disappear for weeks, and then fucking come back and follow me around, and then fucking— drop in when I’m with someone—”   
  
“After all that bullcrap he was spouting about wanting to roleplay vampire sex,” Jaehwan said over him, calmly, too calmly for Sanghyuk’s current anger levels, “he got very scared at the real thing, didn’t he. Left you all alone for the big, bad vampire to eat.”   
  
And that was the worst part. Jaehwan had hit the nail right on the head. Taehyun hadn’t even given a second thought to Sanghyuk’s safety. It didn’t matter, in the end, and even if it hadn’t been Jaehwan, Sanghyuk would have most likely been able to handle a vampire on his own, with his wards. But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting, that he wasn’t upset, at being left behind as vampire food. He and Taehyun weren’t lovers, but then, neither had he and Sungjae been. And Sungjae wouldn’t have left him for dead. Not even against Jaehwan, Elimia though he was.  
  
“Shut up,” Sanghyuk said. “Oh my god, shut up. I can’t even believe you. I can’t believe— why are you even here?”  
  
“I wanted to speak with you,” Jaehwan said, utterly unfazed in the face of Sanghyuk’s anger. “I would have done so last night, but you stayed at work until after sunrise.” The look he gave Sanghyuk seemed to imply that if he hadn’t been then this situation could have been avoided. How dare Sanghyuk not be available whenever his majesty Jaehwan wanted to speak to him, or stick his dick into him, after all. “It’s about you becoming a solo hunter.”  
  
Sanghyuk jerked. He hadn’t wanted Jaehwan to find out about that. “It’s none of your business,” Sanghyuk snapped. “How did you even find out so fast?”  
  
“Wonshik,” Jaehwan said idly, and Sanghyuk’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t be cross with him though, I didn’t give him much choice.”  
  
“Of course you didn’t,” Sanghyuk said bitterly.  
  
“You cannot do it,” Jaehwan said simply.   
  
Sanghyuk blinked. “What?” he asked, unable to believe what he was hearing.  
  
“You cannot be a solo hunter. It is suicidal. I forbid it,” Jaehwan said, face serious. He wasn’t kidding.  
  
“Oh,” Sanghyuk said, “well, I guess I’ll just go back to HQ and tell them the shitty possessive vampire I’m fucking on occasion forbade me from hunting solo, so sign me up for a babysitter straight away. Are you going to give me a curfew too?”  
  
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” Jaehwan said softly. His eyes were intense.  
  
“You’ve been treating me like my company is a burden for a while now, you just— fuck me and then fuck off, we’re not fuck buddies anymore, we’re just— _fucking_ , without any of the companionship part. Don’t start acting like you care now, Jaehwan, I know you don’t.”  
  
“I would rather you not die,” Jaehwan said, terse.   
  
“Why?” Sanghyuk cried, and Jaehwan opened his mouth to speak, but Sanghyuk spoke over him, “oh, yeah, because I’m your blood and sex on demand. Wouldn’t want to lose that, after all. I didn’t sign up for this when I agreed to fuck you, Jaehwan.”  
  
“Nor did I,” Jaehwan said. “But nonetheless, you will not do it.”  
  
Sanghyuk started to laugh, purely from disbelief. “You cannot stop me. It’s my choice, not yours. I can handle myself.” Jaehwan pressed his lips together, unhappy. “Can you tell me why the fuck this conversation couldn’t have waited until I was alone?”  
  
“I was trying to prove a point,” Jaehwan said.  
  
“And what point is that?” Sanghyuk cried, gesturing at him. “The point that you’re a piece of shit sometimes?”   
  
Jaehwan’s eyes flicked to the street corner that Taehyun had disappeared around. “He doesn’t care about you. None of them have.”  
  
“And neither do you, so you can shove that right back up your ass where it came from,” Sanghyuk said, nearly shouting. Jaehwan didn’t reply, merely pressed his lips together. “You’re not even going to apologise, are you?”   
  
“I wouldn’t even know what to apologise for,” Jaehwan said.   
  
Sanghyuk sensed he was about to lose it, was about to start screaming. His fingertips twitched, itching to grab the hilt of his dagger. He was so fed up, so _tired_ —  
  
“Get out of here,” Sanghyuk said harshly. “I can’t— I can’t look at you right now. We are going to talk about this later, mark my words, but right now I don’t want to do something stupid. So get the fuck out of here, and don’t come around, you’re good at that, it’s shouldn’t be hard. I don’t— I don’t want to see you until I’ve calmed down.”  
  
Jaehwan was doing that thing, where he was staring at Sanghyuk, some kind of hurricane behind his eyes, a roiling storm that Sanghyuk couldn’t figure out. But then he shuttered it, and a moment later he was gone. It took another few beats for Sanghyuk’s wards to settle down.  
  
He unclenched his hands, finding his nails had dug crescents into his palms. His breathing was loud in the silence of the night.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk woke up slowly, painfully. He had slept fitfully, waking up often, his dreams convoluted when he did manage to fall asleep. He would have liked to have come home and fallen asleep easily, lord knew he was exhausted, but he’d been too angry, even in his exhaustion. Now though he was just— numb.   
  
The light was streaming through the curtains that he had forgotten to close when he had come home. He groaned and rolled over, shielding his face from it, half burying his face into his pillow. With his one exposed eye, he squinted at the clock on his bedside table. According to the bright red glowing numbers, it was just after ten in the morning. Still early, by Sanghyuk’s internal clock. Far, far too early.   
  
He had things to do, things to take care of. Work tonight, which would be difficult on the little amount of sleep he had managed to snatch. His eyes felt heavy with sleep, but there was an energy buzzing through his limbs which felt unnatural, like a switch had been turned on, and he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.   
  
“A shower,” he mumbled, the sound half lost against the pillow. “Then some coffee, maybe? Yes, maybe.” He lifted his head up, and let it drop again. In the end it took him another ten minutes before he dragged himself out of bed and into the bathroom.   
  
The shower did a bit to fortify him, waking him up enough that he could face breakfast. It had been a while since he had been awake this early, with so much time before he had to go to work, so he pulled on a pair of jeans and his shirt from the night before, and walked to the bakery a few blocks away, the one which did freshly baked croissants and scones each morning. He had found the place a couple of weeks after he had first moved into his apartment, but never really had an opportunity to go to it.   
  
After the night he had had, he figured he deserved to treat himself, and thus made sure that anything he bought contained either copious amounts of chocolate or caramel, or both.   
  
Walking back to his apartment, the paper bag the pastries were packed in clutched in his hand, he turned his face up to the sun, letting it warm his skin. It was cooler now that it was September, a light breeze playing with his hair, but still nice enough that he could appreciate it.   
  
Back in his apartment, he set up his laptop, poured himself an orange juice, and ate three of the pastries in a row while he watched four consecutive episodes of Special Victims Unit. Once that was done, it was nearing mid-afternoon, his shift creeping closer minute by minute, and he could put it off no longer.   
  
He had left his phone on the coffee table last night, where it couldn’t disturb him through the night. When he finally picked it up, there was nothing. No messages, no voicemails, no missed calls. He had expected more, more than that. Had expected that even if he had been left behind in the spur of the moment, Taehyun would have thought of him afterwards.   
  
He called Taehyun’s number, practically punching at the buttons, and waited for an answer. He waited so long that he almost thought about hanging up, but then; “Hello?” Taehyun sounded tentative, scared. Maybe he thought it was a vampire calling him, in the middle of the fucking day.   
  
“It’s me,” Sanghyuk said, short and sharp.  
  
“Oh, Sanghyuk,” Taehyun gasped. “Oh my god, I thought— you’re okay, you were okay, how did you—”   
  
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Sanghyuk interrupted. “No thanks to you.”   
  
There was a long silence. “Sanghyuk, I can explain.”  
  
“Oh, can you?” Sanghyuk asked. “Can you? Because I’m dying to hear it. To me, it looked like you just turned tail and ran all by yourself, but I’d love to hear what really happened.”   
  
“I just— I panicked, okay? There was a vampire _right there_ , and can you really blame me for it?”  
  
“Yes,” Sanghyuk said. “I can.”   
  
“Then you’re a better man than I am,” Taehyun retorted, sharply. Sanghyuk snorted softly. “I was concerned about you, of course I was, it all happened so fast, I didn’t even realise what was happening until I was already a few blocks away—”  
  
“If you were so worried, why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you come back for me? You just left me there with a vampire. I could have been killed, and you didn’t even look back.”   
  
“You were okay, in the end, weren’t you?” Taehyun said. “I notice that the vampire didn’t _actually_ eat you, so you must have gotten away too.”  
  
“You’re— are you honestly arguing that since I’m still alive, it must be okay that you left me to die? What kind of fucked up logic is that, Taehyun?”   
  
Taehyun sighed. He sounded like he was being asked to bear some heavy burden. “Look, Sanghyuk, can we just forget about it? It was a mistake, I’m sorry—”  
  
“What?” Sanghyuk started to laugh, dryly, without humour. “Are you seriously— I didn’t call you to forgive you, Taehyun, I called to tell you I never want to fucking see you again.”   
  
“Oh, come on,” Taehyun said, almost whining. “You’ve got to be kidding me. It was a mistake, Sanghyuk, we all make mistakes.”  
  
“That wasn’t a _mistake_ ,” Sanghyuk said, unable to believe what he was hearing. “I know we’re not fucking Romeo and Juliet here, I wasn’t expecting you to valiantly throw yourself to the vampire to save me, but I can’t forgive you for just leaving me to die in your place. A decent person would have— grabbed my hand or— or at least fucking texted after the fact. Just to see. But you didn’t even do me that. So— delete my number, okay? Delete my number and don’t call me again, because I don’t want to hear from you.”   
  
“Sanghyuk, please—”   
  
Sanghyuk hung up. That had, somehow, gone even worse than he had expected. At no point had he expected Taehyun to attempt to make excuses for his behaviour. It had turned Sanghyuk cold. He had lots of bad things to say about Jaehwan, but he didn’t think even Jaehwan was that fucking self-centered. But then again, Sanghyuk knew him well enough to know that Jaehwan wouldn’t have just left him like that.   
  
Thinking about Jaehwan made him upset, though, made the anger bubble up inside of him, so instead of thinking about him, he got up and grabbed his jacket and keys. He would head into work early, train for a bit. Imagine that each of the model vamps they had in the training area was Jaehwan, and stake them where he couldn’t Jaehwan.   
  
——  
  
It took three nights, and five mangled vampire dummies later (“The dummies are for the trainees, Sanghyuk, not you,” the grizzled training center manager had told him after Sanghyuk had annihilated the fifth one) before Sanghyuk felt capable of going to see Jaehwan.  
  
He pulled the car up to the side of the curb and cut the engine out. It was still light out, just, and a couple of teenagers walked past the car, laughing together. One of them saw him sitting there and nudged her friend, who giggled even harder when she saw him. Sanghyuk ignored them.   
  
This parking area was a bit further out than he normally would be, but the walk from here to Jaehwan’s place would therefore be longer, and give him more time to clear his head and work out what he wanted to say. It was along a street of stores, the one right next to the car a bakery. He would grab something to eat, maybe browse a little bit in the store windows. Christmas was a ways off, yet, but he rather thought he needed to find a nice gift for Sungjae. It was never too early too look.  
  
The stores shut down around him as the sun set. Storefronts pulled down their shutters, and those few people shopping disappeared into their cars or walked quickly back to their houses. Sanghyuk sat on a bench, munching his food, as the street lamps flickered on around him.  
  
After the sun had been set for close to an hour, plenty of time for the vampires to have woken up, he trashed his pastry wrapper and the coffee he had picked up, and started the walk to Jaehwan’s house.  
  
The biggest problem, he found, once he had let himself down into the tunnels and was making the now familiar journey, was that he literally didn’t have any idea what to say. He had no idea how to get through to Jaehwan. It was like arguing with a rock.  
  
The house seemed empty, when he first stepped in, but that was always an illusion. “Hello?” he called, slipping his shoes off and leaving them by the side of the door. He shivered, the marble flooring icy cold. There was no answer to his call.  
  
He made his way through the house, shivering all the way. He should have guessed how cold it would be down here, should have wrapped up warmer, but he had been away too long, he had forgotten. It was a relief to step into the hallway and onto carpet, decidedly warmer than the marble.   
  
No one came out to see him. That seemed to suggest that Wonshik and Hongbin were out, and Jaehwan was either out or ignoring. Neither of those options were appealing at this moment in time. Sanghyuk just wanted to say his piece and see where the dice would fall.   
  
He knocked lightly on Jaehwan’s bedroom door, and wasn’t surprised when there was no answer. He found that the door was unlocked, and he pushed it open gently. The room was empty, the bed made, everything tidy and in the right place as usual. He even checked the bathroom; that, too, was empty.   
  
He shivered, curling his feet into the carpet. Jaehwan must have been out, though god only knew where. Sanghyuk would wait for him. Perhaps Jaehwan would be pleased by that. He would go to the library, where he could light a fire in the grate, and read until some form of company arrived.   
  
He found, however, that the library wasn’t unoccupied. Jaehwan was in there, laying flat on his back on one of the couches, a book, some sort of cheap thriller paperback, open and held up above his face. “Oh,” said Sanghyuk, stopping in the doorway.   
  
“Wonshik and Hongbin are not here,” Jaehwan said, tone curiously flat.  
  
“I’m not here to see Wonshik and Hongbin,” Sanghyuk said.   
  
Jaehwan lay his book down on the table beside him and rose to his feet. “Oh? Then why are you here? Because I distinctly recall you telling me you did not wish to speak with me, and that I should stay away.”   
  
“Yes, I did not want to see you, because I was rightfully angry with you, and wanted a bit of space to think before we saw one another and spoke again,” Sanghyuk said. He shuffled into the room, closing the door behind him. “And now that I’ve had that, we need to talk, as I said we would.”   
  
“You know,” Jaehwan said, gritting the words out, “I thought you would be grateful to me for showing you exactly what type of person you were letting into your life, letting into your bed. But apparently not. My work,” he added in a wondering tone, “it always goes unappreciated.”   
  
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Sanghyuk could feel his own anger rising, and he struggled hard to keep it down. “That wasn’t why I was mad, Jaehwan, you just— you can’t just do things like that, it is _my_ business.”   
  
“I do not understand,” Jaehwan said, derisive. “What I did was a favor. Yes, perhaps it was not my place, but it is certainly not worth you getting so upset about.”  
  
“You didn’t do it because you have my interests at heart, Jaehwan. This is just about control,” Sanghyuk said, fighting, fighting so hard, to keep his voice level, keep his anger down. “Maybe Taehyun was a cowardly dick, but that still doesn’t give you the right, Jaehwan.”  
  
“What happened to him?” Jaehwan asked, taking a step towards Sanghyuk, silky smooth.   
  
“What?” Sanghyuk asked.  
  
“Taehyun,” Jaehwan breathed out, in mimicry of Sanghyuk. The way he said it made Sanghyuk shiver. “Are you still going to see him again?”  
  
“Of course not,” Sanghyuk snapped. “I couldn’t look at him, not after that—”  
  
“Then what I did was a favor, whether you want to see it or not,” Jaehwan said softly, silkily. “He wasn’t worthy, he was a coward. Most humans are.”  
  
Sanghyuk gaped. Yes, talking to Jaehwan was like talking to a rock. A very stupid, callous rock. “He wasn’t _worthy_? Are you the gatekeeper of my bedchamber now? None shall pass unless they endure trial by douchebag vampire?”  
  
“If I was, I’d be a poor one, wouldn’t I?” Jaehwan said, taking another step forward, slow, and the movement reminded Sanghyuk too much of an animal stalking prey. It made his wards titter nervously. “I have seen you, Sanghyuk, spreading your legs for anyone who will have you. Why do you look elsewhere? I know what you’re looking for, you know what you’re looking for. And we both know that you won’t find it elsewhere. We both know that I’m the only one who can give it to you how you like it.”   
  
That made Sanghyuk’s anger spike, because it was true, it was all true, and Sanghyuk hated it, hated himself for it. Sex, sex with anyone that wasn’t Jaehwan, was beginning to be boring. No matter how many people he went home with, no matter how much they varied, they all blurred into one mass of dull sex. “I—”   
  
“What if I stopped it,” Jaehwan interrupted, his pleasure at seeing Sanghyuk rattled and angry obvious in his voice. “What if I told you it was over, what would you do then? Continue to whore your way through the entire city? I could, you know. I might. I am growing tired of watching you fuck any man that looks at you.”   
  
“We both know you’re not going to end this, you’ve sunk your fangs too far into me to want to let go now,” Sanghyuk said, feeling his anger overflow, pouring out of his mouth. “Who says I’m even looking for anything, Jaehwan? Maybe I just enjoy sex, enjoy people.”  
  
“Because I’ve noticed something, Sanghyuk. No matter how angry you are, you always let me back into your bed,” Jaehwan said, smiling, his fangs run out. It was slightly unnerving. “I think, deep down, you know you’ll never be satisfied with anyone else. You require something more than _normal_. And you know deep down that you’re never going to find that something if you keep looking in all these normal places.”   
  
That was so close to what Sanghyuk had been worrying about, what he was scared of, that Jaehwan was going to be his only option, that he was _stuck_ — that it made fear uncoil in his belly, fear that turned to anger, to denial. He stumbled back. “I don’t have to listen to this,” Sanghyuk said. “You know what? Fine. Fine. Have it your way, I’ll just leave. I don’t even have the words to explain how awful you are. I just—”   
  
He turned, fumbling for the door handle. Despite how cold it was, he felt sweaty and shaky. He could barely get his fingers around the knob. He cursed lightly under his breath.  
  
The next moment he was being spun and slammed back against the door. He cried out in surprise and his wards went off all at once, making him cry out again. A moment later, Jaehwan’s hands were holding Sanghyuk’s shoulders down against the door, and his mouth was kissing him roughly, almost brutally.   
  
Sanghyuk wanted to tell him to get off, wanted to rip him mouth away and scream and kick until Jaehwan let go of him and he could run out. But he also wanted to kiss back, wanted to let himself fall into this, back into how good it felt to be in bed with Jaehwan, this Jaehwan, not the impassive one, but the one who felt _alive_. And he was weak, he had always been weak, so instead of doing what he should do and getting out of there, he pressed into Jaehwan and kissed him back.   
  
“They really can’t fuck you right, can they?” Jaehwan asked, the pant heavy in his voice.  
  
“Shut up,” Sanghyuk told him. “Just, shut up, don’t even talk to me, you fucking _asshole_.”  
  
“What do you want me to do?” Jaehwan nipped at Sanghyuk’s bottom lip, and Sanghyuk moaned, blood rushing to his cock. “Come on, Sanghyuk, tell me what you want me to do to you.”   
  
“I want you to shut up,” Sanghyuk said.   
  
He found himself, a second later, being moved too fast to keep track of, the world around him blurring, and then he was being thrown down onto Jaehwan’s bed, his wrists held in a vice-like grip above his head, Jaehwan’s legs holding his own legs down. He squirmed, trying to press up into Jaehwan, who was holding himself off just that bit too far.   
  
“I’ll fuck you if you want,” Jaehwan said. He sucked gently at Sanghyuk’s throat, his teeth grazing just lightly at his skin. Sanghyuk did want it, oh how he wanted it, and he was so filled with self-loathing he felt he might explode from it. His cock was hard in his jeans, fully hard already.   
  
“I thought you said you might end this, were tired of watching me with other people,” he said through lips that felt swollen. He could taste blood.   
  
“Maybe I’m making an exception this time,” Jaehwan said. “Maybe I won’t be so generous next time.”   
  
“We both know you will,” Sanghyuk said. He managed to get his legs free and he slid his thigh between Jaehwan’s legs, pressing his thigh firmly against Jaehwan’s erection. He was easily as hard as Sanghyuk was.   
  
Jaehwan growled; it was not fun or playful and it didn’t make Sanghyuk comfortable being in this bed with him, but when he kissed Sanghyuk again, it wasn’t as rough as it had been before. It was the kind of kiss that made Sanghyuk melt into him, going limp and languid on the bed.   
  
“I hate this,” Jaehwan whispered into his mouth.  
  
“Hate what?” Sanghyuk asked.  
  
Jaehwan didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted off, kneeling between Sanghyuk’s thighs. Sanghyuk reached up to start unbuttoning his own shirt, but Jaehwan knocked them aside and took over, faster than Sanghyuk could have managed; it was off him in seconds. His pants and underwear joined it soon after. If there was one thing Sanghyuk hadn’t missed, it was Jaehwan’s penchant for doing a disappearing act with his clothing.  
  
Jaehwan’s fingers wrapped around Sanghyuk’s cock, palm cool, his thumb smearing the precome down the shaft. He was breathing heavily, almost panting again, fangs run out. “Are you going to bite me?” Sanghyuk asked, wanting it, arching so his hips tipped into Jaehwan’s touch.   
  
“Yes,” Jaehwan whispered, and he leaned his head down and sank his teeth into the side of Sanghyuk’s neck, suddenly and without warning. He bit hard, harder than he normally would, and Sanghyuk’s wards went off again, making him twitch.  
  
“Fuck,” Sanghyuk yelped, hands scrambling for purchase on Jaehwan’s back. He couldn’t hold this, couldn’t stop himself, he could feel Jaehwan feeding, feel every movement as Jaehwan started to lift his mouth, pulling his fangs out—  
  
He came, spilling all over Jaehwan’s hand. It was rushed but easy, his body still feeling so tight and tense even afterwards, even after he had flopped down onto the bed, shaking. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d do it right _then_.”   
  
Jaehwan didn’t say anything, turning his face away so he could move to retrieve the lube that he kept in a drawer in his bedside table. The quick glance Sanghyuk got showed his face was shuttered, closed off. There was a trickle of blood trailing from his mouth down his neck, staining into the collar of his shirt. Sanghyuk reached out to wipe it off and Jaehwan knocked his hand away.   
  
“Hey,” Sanghyuk said softly. “I’m not—”  
  
“I’ve got it,” Jaehwan said. He shrugged the shirt from his shoulders as he tossed the lube down onto the bed. Sanghyuk frowned but sat back on the bed, not sure what to say, not sure what had gotten into him _now_.   
  
Jaehwan stripped slowly, careful, taking the time that he so rarely gave Sanghyuk. His cock _was_ fully hard, curving up towards his stomach, precome beading at the head. He slicked up his fingers with lube and, after a moment of hesitation, said, “Turn over, I want you on your hands and knees.”   
  
“Are you giving me orders again?” Sanghyuk asked. He was slightly playful, trying to dispel the sudden tension he sensed. “You know I don’t like that.”   
  
Jaehwan didn’t smile. Instead he reached out with the hand not coated with lube and took Sanghyuk’s arm and quite easily manhandled him into position, until Sanghyuk was resting on his hands and knees in the centre of the bed, his legs spread so that he was open and vulnerable. Just like Jaehwan liked him, he thought bitterly.   
  
Jaehwan pressed two fingers into him at once, taking next to no care to make sure that Sanghyuk adjusted to them. Sanghyuk hissed, his head dropping down onto the mattress; even with the lube, there was an uncomfortable burn. “That wasn’t very nice,” he said.  
  
Jaehwan snorted. “I’m not very nice, love, you should know this by now.”   
  
Sanghyuk didn’t say what he was thinking, which was close to what he had said to Hakyeon, once; that he knew that Jaehwan did have it in him to be nice. He had seen Jaehwan be nice to him, had experienced Jaehwan being kind to him, actually kind, even if he tried to pass it off as something else.   
  
“Maybe you should try it,” he said.   
  
He heard the soft breath of laughter from Jaehwan, full of derision and self-deprecation, and then Jaehwan started moving his fingers, fast and harsh, drawing the air out of Sanghyuk’s lungs with each hook of his fingers deep inside of him.   
  
After sleeping with guys who couldn’t do it for him, struggling to get off each night, after so many experiences having to actively try to get hard, it was a _relief_ to not have to work for it. He was already hard again, the head of his cock sore and sensitive, but it felt so fucking good to even be able to get hard twice in one night.  
  
He pushed his hips back, meeting Jaehwan’s fingers each time. “Jaehwan,” he panted, “please, fuck me, I need you, I need _this_ —”  
  
A second later Jaehwan’s fingers disappeared, the warmth of his body beside Sanghyuk gone. Sanghyuk groaned, reaching blindly behind him, but a second later Jaehwan was back, his hands holding Sanghyuk’s hips as he fucked into him without a second of warning.   
  
Sanghyuk cried out, trying to jerk away, but Jaehwan held him still and close. “Jaehwan,” he rasped out, fingers fisting into the sheets, almost cramping. “Jaehwan, that’s too fast—”   
  
“Quiet,” said Jaehwan, silky. He rocked his hips, not gently, his hands holding Sanghyuk so hard that Sanghyuk knew already that he would find bruises pressed into his skin the next morning.   
  
Sanghyuk groaned. Jaehwan’s hips moved faster, faster, until it was all Sanghyuk could do to keep up, his knees spread wide on the bed, his thighs burning with the strain. His entire body was pulled taut and tight, his cock aching to be touched. As fast as he had come the first time, he wanted so badly to come again.   
  
“Touch me,” he gasped, half muffled by the sheets. “Please, Jaehwan, touch me—”   
  
Surprisingly, Jaehwan did, his hand reaching around Sanghyuk’s body to wrap around his cock. Sanghyuk moaned, hips jerking, and it was too much again, too good. He pitched forward onto the bed, his arms giving way, as he came again, with a cry of Jaehwan’s name.  
  
“Urgh,” he said, slumping. Now only Jaehwan’s hands were holding him up as he continued fucking him, even faster now. But it didn’t take long for Jaehwan, either; he pressed his forehead to the top of Sanghyuk’s spine as he came, hips stuttering. Sanghyuk felt something wet press against the skin between his shoulders for a moment.  
  
Jaehwan pulled out of him, long before Sanghyuk would have wanted him to, and rolled off Sanghyuk, letting him slump onto the bed. Jaehwan lay beside him, silent, his chest heaving.   
  
Sanghyuk touched his fingers to the side of his neck where the blood was beginning to dry. “You bit too high up,” he said. “I can’t hide this.”   
  
“Good,” Jaehwan said, almost whispering it.   
  
Sanghyuk slid him a glance. “Were you marking me?”   
  
Jaehwan didn’t answer. Instead he slid off the bed and padded out of the room, into the bathroom. Sanghyuk heard the click of the lock being turned, and he sat up, staring at the door. The dismissal was familiar at this point, so familiar, but it still elicited a myriad of emotions in Sanghyuk. “What the fuck,” he said. There was no reply. He heard the water get turned on. Then nothing.   
  
He had promised himself long ago that he would never let himself cry over Jaehwan, not again. But this felt like too much. He felt like there were spiders crawling up and down his skin, a thousand tiny legs scuttling over him. It left him feeling dirty; it was too much like the first time.  
  
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he said, to Jaehwan, to himself. “A goddamn fucking idiot.”   
  
Maybe Jaehwan was right, maybe Sanghyuk couldn’t get his fix elsewhere. But that didn’t mean he had to get it here. He didn’t have to get it all. Maybe being alone was the best option.  
  
Alone was certainly better than this.  
  
Sanghyuk, too, slid off the bed, and gathered his clothes up, yanking them on any which way. He was going home, to spend the night in his own bed. There was no way he could stand staying, not if Jaehwan was going to come out and pretend like nothing had happened, like this wasn’t _different_ , like something wasn’t _wrong_. Something was wrong. Something had been wrong for a long time. And until Sanghyuk knew what, then he wasn’t going to give Jaehwan even a sliver of an opening to worm his way into.


	5. Chapter 5

Sanghyuk didn’t know why, but he slept well. He’d been so upset, he’d expected to have nightmares, to toss and turn, but sleep claimed him quickly and he remembered nothing until the next afternoon. He hadn’t slept in this late in months.  
  
He felt disinclined to get up. But his stomach growled, so he heeded it, shuffling into the kitchen slowly.  
  
Tonight was an off night. As he padded to the fridge, he wondered if he should call, go in for a shift. He didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts. He was trying not to think about last night, about— about a lot of what had happened in the last few months. How everything had gone so wrong.  
  
There was nothing in his fridge. Sanghyuk thought back, realizing he hadn’t been grocery shopping in— far too long. It had been so long that he had to sit at his kitchen table for half an hour and write out a list. It was no longer a case of just picking up one or two things; he knew that he was going to have to go into that store with an actual game plan. He wondered when he had let it get this bad.   
  
He blinked around himself, realizing he hadn’t dusted in weeks, and his bathroom was probably coming alive.  
  
“I think today I will— take care of myself,” Sanghyuk whispered, looking down at the grocery list.   
  
He showered, dressed, then went out to face the sunlight.  
  
The drive to the market was a short one. Sanghyuk opted for a basket rather than a cart. He held it cradled in the crook of his left elbow, his shopping list held in his right, where he could easily consult it as he picked the things he needed from the shelves. The store was busy, for all that it was a midday on a Tuesday, and there seemed to be an unholy amount of children running around without any sort of direct supervision from parents.   
  
One particularly rambunctious child kept sprinting up and down the aisles with his arms flailing around in the air, yelling for no apparent reason. He looked, Sanghyuk had to admit, only about five years old, but that didn’t stop it from being highly annoying and distracting. The child was getting under everyone’s feet and there was no sign of his mother or father.   
  
Sanghyuk pondered the shelves of cereal, wondering if he should get the one brand that he always did, or choose something different, just to spice things up somewhat. Unfortunately, the only other type that seemed appealing was some chocolate flavoured cereal that he had been a big fan of as a kid. He didn’t need that kind of sugar intake in his life. He grabbed a box of his usual cereal.   
  
He turned and almost plowed right into the small child running up the aisle. He flailed backwards, ignored completely by said child, and stepped back onto the foot of the person behind him, very heavily. “Ow,” said the person behind him, in a rather pained tone of voice.  
  
“Oh my god,” Sanghyuk said, wheeling around. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”   
  
“Do you have bricks in the bottom of your boots?” the guy asked, from where he was hunkered down to check on his foot. He looked up and gave Sanghyuk a smile. “You’re heavier than you look.”   
  
“I’m so sorry,” Sanghyuk repeated, completely mortified. “I was just— trying to avoid that kid, I wasn’t looking where I was going. I haven’t broken anything, have I?” The last thing he needed was to be forced to pay some guy’s medical bills.   
  
“No, no, I’m fine.” The guy straightened up, his basket left by his feet. “I’m made of sterner stuff than that. No need to worry.”   
  
Sanghyuk’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Good, it would have been a real down point to the day to have broken someone’s toe.”   
  
The guy was still smiling at him, a little softly. He was about Sanghyuk’s height, maybe just a little shorter. He had short dark hair, black rimmed glasses, and was wearing a scarf and a heavy looking coat. He must have sensed where Sanghyuk’s gaze was because he said, “I just moved here from further south. It’s already pretty cold by my standards.”   
  
“Oh, you’re in for some uncomfortable months then,” Sanghyuk said. “It’s barely October, this is positively mild.” He was only wearing his leather jacket, after all.   
  
“So I’ve been told,” the guy said dryly. “I’m Jongsuk, by the way,” he added, holding out his hand for Sanghyuk to shake.   
  
“Sanghyuk.” Sanghyuk shifted his basket so he could take Jongsuk’s hand.   
  
“I saw you eyeing the chocolate cereal,” Jongsuk said after they had let go. “I think you should get it. Treat yourself, and all that.”  
  
Sanghyuk laughed. “Yeah, I know. I think I’ve treated myself a bit too much, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere good.”  
  
“I don’t think chocolate cereal is going to cause anything catastrophic though.” He looked pleased to have made Sanghyuk laugh.  
  
Sanghyuk glanced over the items in Jongsuk’s cart, locking onto a plastic container of cookies. “From me to you,” Sanghyuk murmured, conspiratorially, “this place’s bakery makes shitty chocolate chip cookies.” He began to saunter away. “You’re better off getting the snickerdoodles.”  
  
Jongsuk nodded solemnly. “Thanks for the advice.”  
  
Sanghyuk smiled, turning away and heading down the aisle. He felt a little better, a little brighter.  
  
There wasn’t much left on his list. He snagged the remaining items, then headed to a check out counter. He noted Jongsuk being rung up at the far counter. He looked cute, bundled up in his scarf. It made Sanghyuk chuckle.  
  
Their cashiers finished with them at around the same times, so Sanghyuk was leaving the store with his one overfull paper bag right as Jongsuk was pushing his cart full of bags outside, into the admittedly somewhat chilly air.  
  
“Hi, again,” Jongsuk said, a little shy.  
  
“Hi,” Sanghyuk said, smiling. “Your toe still not broken?”  
  
Jongsuk looked away, smiling slightly. “Yeah, it’s fine.” When he looked back up, he gave Sanghyuk a soft, unsure smile. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t suppose— I mean, I just thought that maybe I could get your number? Like I said, I’ve just moved here, and I don’t really know anyone, so it would be really nice if we could hang out.”   
  
Sanghyuk blinked, a little taken aback. He hadn’t even realised that Jongsuk was into him. “I—”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be weird,” Jongsuk said quickly. “I mean, if you’re not— you know, if you’re not into guys, we can just be friends— I just— wow, I made this awkward.”   
  
Sanghyuk started to laugh, tickled by the thoroughly alarmed look on Jongsuk’s face. “It’s not that. I’m definitely into guys. You just took me by surprise, that’s all.” His smile dimmed a little, and he bit his bottom lip. “But if you’re— I mean, are you asking me out on a date then?”  
  
“I guess I am,” Jongsuk said, blushing a little. “Though like I said, I’m also just— wanting to make friends, you know?”  
  
“It’s just, I kind of just had a bad break up? Of a sort,” Sanghyuk said. That was as true to the truth as he could get. He and Jaehwan hadn’t broken up, not really, they couldn’t when they’d never been dating. But their relationship was crashing and burning, so. It was easier to say that they’d broken up.  
  
“Ah, well, we can just hang out as two people, then?” Jongsuk offered. “I don’t want to push you, or anything, I just think you seem cool. And I’ve been dying for some good Chinese food, you know, but have no idea where to get it, and don’t want to go alone besides.”  
  
Sanghyuk nodded, serious. “That is an issue,” he said. “You’re lucky I know a place.”  
  
Jongsuk beamed at that, utterly unguarded, and it made Sanghyuk feel warm.   
  
What the hell, he figured.  
  
Their date-that-wasn’t-a-date was arranged for a couple of nights later. Sanghyuk managed to get through work without running too much into Sungjae, and worked through all the paperwork which had been dumped on him. He thought that Kris was trying to overwork him so that he wouldn’t have time to go out into the field all on his own. Sanghyuk understood where he was coming from, but he was going to get carpel tunnel at this rate.   
  
Sanghyuk really did know a good Chinese restaurant. It was a small place that he had found not too long ago, nestled on the second floor of a building that held a store which sold women’s lingerie. It wasn’t a particularly good location, Sanghyuk could admit, but the food was excellent, and it was run by an old couple who knew him by now and always gave him extra food when he came in to get take out.   
  
Perhaps because they had never seen him with a date before, said owners were more overjoyed than ever before to see him. They swept him and Jongsuk into the only corner booth in the restaurant, somewhat near the kitchens. As he sat, unwinding his scarf from around his neck, Jongsuk sniffed appreciatively. “It smells so good,” he murmured.  
  
“It _is_ good,” Sanghyuk said. “I haven’t found another Chinese restaurant in the city that is as good as this one.”   
  
Jongsuk grinned at him. “I should hire you to give me a food tour of the city.”   
  
“You should,” Sanghyuk agreed. “It would be the best one of your life. We’d be rolling you back to your apartment.”   
  
“I need an Italian place that does really thin crusts,” Jongsuk said. “I’m talking really thin, and crispy. You know a place?”  
  
“No, because I like my crust thick, because I’m not a heathen.”   
  
Jongsuk gasped in mock outrage. “I think you’ll find it is you who is the heathen. Haven’t you ever _been_ to Italy?”   
  
“Funnily enough, no,” Sanghyuk said.   
  
“Good, because neither have I,” Jongsuk said. “That could have been very embarrassing.”   
  
Sanghyuk laughed as the waitress came over with the menu for them to look at. Jongsuk pleaded out, telling Sanghyuk that he should order whatever he thought they would like the best. Sanghyuk did, although he was suspicious of Jongsuk’s claim to like anything. In Sanghyuk’s experience, people who claimed that rarely did.   
  
Luckily, if Jongsuk didn’t like anything that Sanghyuk ordered, he didn’t complain about it. He didn’t complain about much at all. The food was delicious, the restaurant had a lovely atmosphere, Sanghyuk looked really good, the wine was great. Sanghyuk would have accused him of being insincere, but it didn’t seem to be the case. Jongsuk just seemed really enthusiastic. It was actually somewhat endearing.  
  
Jongsuk worked as an engineer for a company that made cars. He had worked at one of the regional plants before being promoted and moved up to the city to work in the head office. He was somewhat older than Sanghyuk, with a graduate degree and a few years working in the industry.   
  
With such an illustrious career behind him, Sanghyuk hadn’t expected more than the basic questions when Sanghyuk told him the, by now, well fleshed out story of him working in a grocery store. He always said the store was near where he lived, picking a neighbourhood that most of the guys he slept with would never set foot in, but since he and Jongsuk had actually met near to it, he changed his story so the grocery store was in the town one over.  
  
“Do you like it there?” Jongsuk asked, which was, perhaps, the first time anyone had ever thought to ask him that.  
  
Sanghyuk shrugged, fingers playing with the rim of his wine glass. The food had been swept away, desert consumed, and now they were merely idling, talking. He found that he wasn’t wanting to rush away. “It’s okay. I like the people I work with, at least. Sometimes the customers can be a handful.”   
  
“How so?”   
  
“They just— sometimes they’re pains. Often they don’t seem to have any concept of personal boundaries, they get right up against you demanding things from you. Like, I can’t do a return if you don’t have a receipt, duh.”   
  
Jongsuk smiled. “I worked in a CD store when I was in college, just for a semester or so. I could barely even handle that. I have nothing by respect for people who manage to make it work full time.”   
  
“Yeah, well,” Sanghyuk said, who had long got over the prickle of discomfort he felt at telling such lies, and the prickle of discomfort at no longer feeling that discomfort. “You have to pay the bills somehow, don’t you?”   
  
“Touche,” Jongsuk said. “I’ll drink to that.”   
  
Later, after the bill had been paid — they had gone Dutch, which Sanghyuk always approved of — they stepped out of the restaurant, Jongsuk wrapped up in his coat and scarf, Sanghyuk in his leather jacket, barely even feeling the nip of the cold air that had, admittedly, swept in that night. Sanghyuk glanced at him, shivering even with his coat, and said, softly, “It’s only October.”   
  
“I know,” Jongsuk said. “Believe me, I know. I’m okay. I just need to move, I’ll warm up if we move.”   
  
“Move where?” Sanghyuk asked, surprised; it was late, too late to go anywhere else. They had stayed in the restaurant talking for longer than he had realised.   
  
Jongsuk rubbed at the side of his nose in a particularly endearing show of shyness. “Well, I wondered— I thought I could walk you home.”   
  
Sanghyuk smiled. “I can get home safely, you know,” he said teasingly. “Regardless of how dark it is outside.”   
  
“That’s not it,” Jongsuk mumbled. “I just— I’d like to walk you home, I’d like to spend some more time with you.”   
  
“Oh,” said Sanghyuk. He gave Jongsuk a warm smile, just a little shy himself. “Okay. That sounds nice.”   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan flitted through the shadows quickly, easily, following the scent that was so familiar. He liked travelling like this, liked the way that he became less than real, passing by the few humans who were silly enough to still be out after dark. He liked the way that their heads turned, their eyes registering some sort of movement right at the edges of their vision, but he was gone too fast for them to place it. They always looked so frightened afterwards, clutching their jackets closer, moving just that bit faster.   
  
He had been following Sanghyuk for only a short time, after he had swung by his apartment and found it empty. He had been willing to wait inside the apartment for him to return, but there was, he knew from experience, nothing interesting in Sanghyuk’s apartment with which to occupy his mind.  
  
He had followed Sanghyuk’s scent to a quiet neighbourhood, quite near one of the university campuses that Jaehwan sometimes trolled for prey on during Halloween. It was the kind of neighbourhood where all the street lights worked all the time, and VCF officers often patrolled. Jaehwan wasn’t worried about those, they were incompetent, jumped up officials, and posed no threat to the likes of him. But the place had surprised him, not the usual type of hunting ground that Sanghyuk chose to stake out.   
  
Sanghyuk, it appeared, had gone inside a building with a lingerie store and restaurant, since that was where the scent ended. Jaehwan presumed he had gone to the restaurant. He couldn’t get close enough to look inside, but it looked like a perfectly normal human establishment. He was confused suddenly, unable to work out why Sanghyuk would need to be in this area of town. He surely wasn’t working. That meant that, presumably, he was looking for a hookup, and the thought of that made Jaehwan’s upper lip curl. But this was a strange neighborhood to be looking for that.  
  
A mystery had presented itself, and Jaehwan did so enjoy mysteries. Murder mysteries, to be exact, but he would take what he could get. He flitted away to the top of a nearby building, a safe distance away from both the VCF and the restaurant, so that when Sanghyuk emerged, he wouldn’t be able to twig Jaehwan’s presence right away.   
  
Jaehwan luckily didn’t have to wait long. The door to the building opened just a few times before Sanghyuk stepped out, wearing skinny jeans and that soft leather jacket that he usually wore when hunting. He turned his head to say something to the person behind him, who stepped out close after him, too close.  
  
Jaehwan felt something rise up inside of him, something which clawed hot and angrily at his throat until he felt as though he would throw up because of it. He’d seen Sanghyuk with so many men at this point, and it still burned, every time, still felt like agony. And after they’d just fucked— why was Sanghyuk still going out, still bringing people home with him? He knew he’d never find what he wanted. Jaehwan had _shown_ him that, countless times.  
  
This man looked different, though, not the usual type Sanghyuk went home with. He seemed too— _soft_. Sanghyuk, in turn, also looked different than he usually did when trying to entice someone, looked comfortable, ordinary. The man said something that had Sanghyuk laughing in a happy, carefree sort of way which should have been Jaehwan’s right to cause, and which he hadn’t caused in quite some time.   
  
There was something wrong with this picture, but Jaehwan couldn’t quite figure it out, not until the man reached up, haltingly, to gently brush a crumb off Sanghyuk’s cheek. The man blushed, afterwards, and Sanghyuk ducked to hide a smile, but not before Jaehwan saw his eyes soften, and his ears pinkening. Then it clicked.  
  
Sanghyuk wasn’t here looking for a hookup, he was on a fucking _date_. With someone that it looked like he actually liked. As Jaehwan watched, Sanghyuk slipped his hand into the man’s, holding it gently as they walked.  
  
It would take Jaehwan less than three seconds to get down the building and to Sanghyuk’s side, less than a second to grab the man who was touching Jaehwan’s human, less than a second to be gone and out of Sanghyuk’s reach. And oh, how Jaehwan would take his time, how he would tear and rip and bite until there were no more screams, no more voice left with which to scream, no more—  
  
He moved before his mind could even give the order. He slunk back into the shadows, retracing his steps, _fleeing_. He didn’t need to see this. He had forced himself to watch before, but this— this was different, disgusting, this was slow and intimate, this was Sanghyuk _giving_ himself to someone else.   
  
Sex was one thing, love quite another. Jaehwan would not force himself to stand watch as Sanghyuk fell in love with someone who was not him. He would spare himself that torture, at the very least.   
  
He had often heard Taekwoon berate him for his lack of self control when it came to certain matters. They had both known that given a choice, Jaehwan would not have made it to be an Elimia, would have gorged himself on blood, given in to his emotions. It was not a weakness, Jaehwan thought, with certain emotions, not a weakness to wish to give yourself pleasure.   
  
What would have given him pleasure, on the long trip back to his house, would have been to dismember every single human that he passed, to have left them bloody and broken, their blood undrunk, to cause them the pain that one of them seemed so determined to bring to Jaehwan. But he managed to hold himself in until he was home, bursting through the front door as if there was something on his heels, chasing him.   
  
Wonshik and Hongbin were home, he could sense them, in their bedroom together. Perhaps— but no, no, of course not, he would not harm them, could not harm them. But if he could not bring himself to tear flesh, then he would have to turn to the next best thing.   
  
There was an empty room down at the end of a hallway, a bedroom which had gone unused the entire time that Jaehwan had lived there. There were too many rooms for most of them to have ever been necessary. Most of these rooms functioned, therefore, as sort of storage rooms for the various treasures and bric-a-brac that his maker had found on his trips.  
  
This particular room housed nothing of importance, really, besides a number of plates, a collection of coloured glassware, and some impressive sets of heavy furniture, closets and chairs and the like. Even in his anger, Jaehwan knew to choose this room, rather than one of the ones which held something actually valuable. The itch in his fingers wanted him to destroy the piano and all that went with it, but that— that was too much.   
  
The glasses went first, hurled against the wall with as much violence as he could muster. Pieces of glass rained down onto the ground in a swirl of colour, pinks and reds and blues and greens, until the floor was a patchwork. The plates proved far more satisfying, the sound of them smashing echoing around the room until it drowned out anything else, until he couldn’t remember Sanghyuk telling him that what he did was none of his business, because it was Jaehwan’s business, it was absolutely his business—  
  
The last plate was nothing more than dust, and he could still feel that rage, homicidal, still pounding away at him, and so he turned his attention to one of the closets by him, kicking and smashing until it resembled kindling for the fire. That was far more satisfying, and he repeated the process with all of the furniture. Soon there was nothing left, nothing he could hurt or break or destroy, and he was still so _angry_.  
  
His feet were bleeding where he had trampled on the glass and porcelain, each step digging it deeper inside of him, the pain welcome. He took it all, the outside pain and the inside and vowed it to himself that he would not, could not do this.   
  
“I’d rather die,” he said out loud, viciously, to no one in particular, to himself, “than touch him when he’s with that _boy_. I will not see him, I will not go to him, I won’t do it.”  
  
——  
  
It would have been nice to have been able to stroll back to Sanghyuk’s apartment slowly, to take their time. But neither of them were willing hang around, to walk slow. You learned from a very young age to not dawdle when you were outside at night. It wasn’t as though walking faster made you less likely to be attacked but it gave a rather reassuring false sense of security at least. Jongsuk’s pace was brisk, but not too fast, just enough to instil that security, while still being considered a normal pace.   
  
“Is this going out of your way?” Sanghyuk asked, his hand still gently clasped in Jongsuk’s.   
  
“Nah,” Jongsuk said. “I actually live pretty close to this area, I think. I should be able to find my way back no problem.”   
  
“That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,” Sanghyuk said dryly.   
  
“I can look after myself too,” Jongsuk said, giving him a smile.  
  
“Against vampires?” Sanghyuk asked, raising his eyebrows. “Not many people can make that claim.”   
  
Jongsuk laughed. “Well, okay, maybe not against vampires. I’d be screwed up against one of those. But I took some self-defence classes in college, I know how to defend myself against the more mundane variety of attackers out there.”   
  
“Ah, so you are trying to be my protector.”   
  
“No,” said Jongsuk, in a strange tone of voice, that was neither playful nor serious. “I’m just soaking in your presence. Enjoying our riveting conversation.”  
  
“If I’m boring you then I can just—”  
  
“I’m serious,” Jongsuk said, glancing across at him. “I like talking to you. I’ve been spending all my days talking people about nothing but car designs and manufacturing. I needed something else. Even if that something else is half an hour on the mechanics of the Death Star.”   
  
Sanghyuk blushed a little. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be,” Jongsuk said earnestly. “I enjoyed it! It’s just nice to get out of my head, a bit, you know? And you— you’re, you’re really good looking, you know that, right?”   
  
Sanghyuk was definitely blushing now. It was one thing to be told that while drunk, or post-sex, quite another to be told it whilst walking down the street, stone cold sober. “I— thank you?”   
  
“When I saw you in the supermarket— well, after you stood on my toe in the supermarket, I just really wanted to take you out. I guess I kind of used a ruse, telling you that we could just be friends, but— I’d like to take you out again? Somewhere I could pick, this time?”   
  
They had come to a stop outside Sanghyuk’s apartment building, and Sanghyuk finally dropped Jongsuk’s hand. A couple of lights were on in a few of the windows, and one of the street lamps was flickering a few down. Sanghyuk gave Jongsuk a smile, still feeling the traces of his blush on his face, the slight uncomfortable sweat in the crook of his elbows.   
  
“I would really like that,” he said.   
  
“Great,” Jongsuk said, sounding genuinely pleased. “I’ll— call you, then? To arrange the date and time and stuff?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Sanghyuk. He gave a mock salute. “I leave it up to you.”  
  
Jongsuk smiled at him. It was almost the same smile he had had in the supermarket, but _more_ somehow. It felt almost dreamy. For a moment, Sanghyuk thought he was going to be kissed, he was preparing himself for it, wanting it, but instead Jongsuk leaned in and pressed his lips chastly to Sanghyuk’s cheek.  
  
“Goodnight, Sanghyuk,” he said softly, pulling away.  
  
Sanghyuk blinked at him. He was so surprised that he clean forgot to say goodbye back.  
  
——  
  
It was decidedly colder now in November than it had been the last time Sanghyuk had come to the park near Hakyeon’s house. Stubbornly, though, he was only wearing his leather jacket. He may have been colder for it, but it left him feeling more comfortable, more at ease. It was easier to move like this, an advantage for a hunter.   
  
He had arrived an hour before their arranged meeting time, feeling the urge to get out of his apartment, to walk somewhere that wasn’t completely familiar to him for once. When he had first arrived, a short while before the sunset, the park had been filled with a number of children, most of them looking like they were in middle school, playing on the swings, running around throwing balls, feeding bread to the ducks in the pond. Taking advantage before the days shortened utterly.  
  
As the sky darkened, the park had cleared out, parents whisking their children home. Even those older kids who had been pushing their boundaries had left before it could get fully dark. Soon Sanghyuk was left with an empty park to stroll through, the silence that fell over it oddly jarring compared to the sounds of children’s laughter and play that had covered it just a mere half hour earlier.  
  
Hakyeon and Taekwoon were sitting on the bench when Sanghyuk swung back that way again. They were talking quietly, Taekwoon’s head bent to listen closely to whatever Hakyeon was saying. Both their heads snapped up as Sanghyuk came closer, and Sanghyuk wondered if that was ever going to be not completely unnerving.   
  
Hakyeon smiled, rising to his feet to embrace Sanghyuk, arms tight around him. His body temperature was knocked up, presumably for Sanghyuk’s benefit. “I missed you,” Hakyeon said, in greeting.  
  
Sanghyuk pulled out of the hug, giving him a somewhat confused smile. “It hasn’t been that long.”  
  
Hakyeon shrugged. “Sometimes I just miss you. I wish we could see each other more often.”   
  
“Ah.” Between work and his dates with Jongsuk recently, Sanghyuk had had very few nights off which he could use to see his friends. “Well, you know you’re always welcome at my place, right? You can come over any time.”   
  
Hakyeon smiled at him, eyes amused. “Yes, I know. Thank you.”   
  
Taekwoon rose to his feet too, silently. His eyes were on Sanghyuk, his face carefully blank, but by now Sanghyuk took that almost as a greeting in itself. “Hey,” he said cheerfully. Taekwoon inclined his head in acknowledgement.   
  
Hakyeon patted Taekwoon on the chest. “Go feed the ducks,” he said, “while Sanghyuk and I talk.”   
  
“The ducks are sleeping, and would run away from me even if they weren’t,” Taekwoon murmured, but he moved off anyway, flitting away to the pond. There could be no doubt that he would still be able to hear every word that was said, but the illusion of privacy was enough for Sanghyuk.   
  
Hakyeon sat down and patted the bench next to him until Sanghyuk sat. He gave Sanghyuk an unsure smile. “Is something wrong? When you asked to meet me, I’ll admit that I was a bit worried.”  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, trying to reassure him. “I just wanted to talk. Last time we didn’t really get to— to catch up, you know?”  
  
“Yeah,” Hakyeon murmured.   
  
“So,” Sanghyuk said, and he was certain that his awkwardness was radiating off him, “how are things?”  
  
“Fine,” Hakyeon said brightly. “Great. I’ve been seeing Wonshik and Hongbin a lot, I think they would probably like to see you soon too.”   
  
“Oh.” Sanghyuk hadn’t been over to their place after his last session with Jaehwan. He felt a bit guilty about it, but his nerves were currently too much for him to worry about it . “Are they okay?”  
  
“Yes.” Hakyeon sighed, apparently at the end of his tether. “Look, Sanghyuk, whatever it is that you want to say, tell me. You don’t have to worry that I’ll be mad or upset or anything.” He suddenly turned suspicious. “Are you turning, is that it?”  
  
Sanghyuk started to laugh. “No,” he said, “oh my god, no, that’s not it. It’s just— I wanted to ask you for some advice.”   
  
“Advice? On what?”  
  
“Dating,” Sanghyuk said, and flushed to the roots of his hair.   
  
Hakyeon raised an eyebrow. “ _Dating_?”  
  
“Yeah.” Sanghyuk was fairly certain his blush probably covered his entire body now. “I’ve been seeing this guy recently, and he’s really nice and all, and we have fun, but I don’t really know what I’m doing, you know?”  
  
“You’ve been seeing someone,” Hakyeon said slowly, questioningly.   
  
“Yeah, we met at the grocery store, just to be cliche. I would have asked Wonshik about this, to be honest, but I always got the feeling that he and Hongbin never actually _dated_.”  
  
Hakyeon chuckled. “Well, you’re not wrong there, but he’s still been on dates before. But anyway, what do you need to know?”  
  
“I don’t rightly know,” Sanghyuk admitted. “I mean we— we get along, I just— he’s from a complete different world to me. He has a family and a job, a real job, in the daytime.”  
  
“I assume,” Hakyeon murmured, “that he doesn’t know what you do for a living.”   
  
“No, he thinks I work at a grocery store,” Sanghyuk muttered. He’d never minded lying, in the past, but now he felt like he was being denied something, having to lie.  
  
“Do you like him?” Hakyeon asked.  
  
Sanghyuk squirmed. “Yeah,” he whispered, “I mean, I guess? Like I said, it’s early days. He’s shy and a little awkward but I find it endearing, weirdly.” Sanghyuk frowned. “We haven’t had sex yet though, he seems skittish in that regard, and that’s getting a little annoying, but you know, whatever.”  
  
Hakyeon rolled his eyes but didn’t speak for a long few minutes. He seemed to be thinking. Eventually he said, in a tentative tone, “But Sanghyuk, what about Jaehwan?”   
  
Sanghyuk blinked. “What about him?” He tried to sound neutral, but just missed.  
  
“Well,” Hakyeon said, drawing the word out, “Does he know about this guy you’re dating?”  
  
“No.” Sanghyuk shuffled on the bench. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Things have been— not good between us,” he said lamely. “We used to have a sort of friendly camaraderie, but that died after I started sleeping with other people. He just— if it’s not his way, he makes you suffer for it, you know? He says we’re not dating, over and over, but then he punishes me for acting accordingly. And even when he clears up— it’s just not right any more. He’s cold, so cold, and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.” He picked at the bench, at a loose piece of wood. “After the last time I just— I felt really low. And he hasn’t been to see me, and I told myself I wasn’t going to go see him. I get a high, when I’m with him, but it’s not worth the crash afterwards, anymore.”  
  
He braced himself for Hakyeon’s _I told you so_ , for Hakyeon to remind him that Jaehwan had always been an ass, that Hakyeon had told him not to get involved. But instead there was just silence for a long time.  
  
“Have you asked Jaehwan about it?” Hakyeon asked, his voice neutral.   
  
“Well, yeah, but he always just says nothing is wrong, that nothing has changed, that nothing should change,” Sanghyuk said, and Hakyeon pursed his lips. He met Sanghyuk’s eyes, and Sanghyuk noted Hakyeon was chewing slightly on his bottom lip, in that way he did when he had something to say but was holding back. “What? What is it?”  
  
Hakyeon looked conflicted, still chewing his bottom lip. He opened his mouth to say something, but then suddenly Taekwoon was there, looming over them. He leaned down, murmuring something in Hakyeon’s ear, pitched too quietly for Sanghyuk to ever have a hope of hearing. Hakyeon frowned, and his mouth was back to being pursed.  
  
Sanghyuk glanced between them, something dawning on him. “You two know what’s going on.”  
  
Hakyeon slid a slight glare at Taekwoon, who looked like a rock, solid and imposing. “It is not our place to speak of it,” Taekwoon murmured, and Hakyeon’s expression got even more sour.   
  
“Talk to Jaehwan about it,” Hakyeon said tersely to Sanghyuk.  
  
Sanghyuk gaped, wondering what alternate reality he’d stepped into that Hakyeon was telling him to go talk to Jaehwan. “I’ve _talked_ to him. It’s like going up against a wall. He doesn’t want to talk to me, never explains anything. And every time it just— things are getting worse and worse.”  
  
“But if you’re dating someone— I think that will change things, Sanghyuk,” Hakyeon said. “You’ve both said no strings, but that applies to sex, not love, not a relationship. I don’t think Jaehwan will be okay with this.”  
  
“He’s not really in a position to weigh in on it,” Sanghyuk said hotly. “He may not like it, but he’s a possessive asshat. If he had his way I’d spend my life leashed to his bed.”  
  
Hakyeon looked at Taekwoon, unhappy. Taekwoon’s facial expression didn’t change, but then he was speaking softly. “I do think, regardless, you should inform him of your decision to see someone. I am well aware of his capacity to be a bastard, but perhaps you seeing someone will spur him to confide in you what he’s been holding back. He can explain, where we cannot.”  
  
But that was the problem, wasn’t it, Sanghyuk thought, as he hugged Hakyeon goodbye and watched him leave with Taekwoon, Taekwoon’s arm back across Hakyeon’s shoulders, holding him close and safe. Jaehwan didn’t seem to want to explain anything to him.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk let himself into Jaehwan’s house quietly, carefully shutting the door behind him. It wasn’t as though anyone in the house wouldn’t know he was there but he didn’t want to disturb the quiet for once.   
  
He had come straight here from talking with Hakyeon, leaving almost immediately so that he could make it there well before the sun went down. He didn’t want to be having a conversation with Jaehwan, only for Jaehwan to fall asleep in the middle of it. He felt— excited, almost, at the prospect of finding out what the hell Jaehwan’s problem was, of bringing this to a head.   
  
He didn’t know if Hongbin or Wonshik were home. He hoped not. Even so, he expected someone would come through to see him, even if just to ask why he was there. He walked into the living room and found it empty, a laptop closed on the coffee table, a jacket slung over the back of the couch. A look in the kitchen revealed it to be similarly empty, and Sanghyuk stepped into the hallway without seeing a single person, without hearing a whisper of movement.   
  
That was to be expected, he knew, since Jaehwan had all those silencing charms installed, but it was creepy as hell. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, his tattoos prickling in discomfort. The lack of Hongbin and Wonshik definitely suggested that they weren’t in. The lack of Jaehwan, his closed abandoned laptop, would suggest the same, but Sanghyuk could sense that _someone_ was in this house.   
  
Trying to shake off the fear, which would only inhibit his movements and senses at the level that it was threatening to peak at, Sanghyuk stalked through the house towards Jaehwan’s bedroom. There were times when he loved the silencing charms that were strung up about the place, times when he knew there were others in the house and he didn’t have to worry about the sounds that Jaehwan was pulling from him, plucking them from Sanghyuk’s body like he was playing him like an instrument. But there were times, like now, when he hated them, when even his own footsteps seemed muffled, fading away too quickly for how fast he was walking, barely echoing in the wide hallways.   
  
“He just likes living in a vampire’s house from a bad movie,” he said aloud, and even that seemed dampened, muffled somehow.   
  
He paused outside Jaehwan’s bedroom, arm raised to knock against the door. For a few seconds he gave a small burst of energy to his wards, letting them feel out his surroundings for him, and they chattered at him nervously. Yes, there was someone behind that door. And considering none of the other vampires would go in there if Jaehwan wasn’t home, then it was certainly Jaehwan.   
  
He knocked before he entered, feeling awkward, and even though there was no reply, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.   
  
Jaehwan was sitting on his bed, propped up by an obscene amount of pillows. There was a book open in his hands, a book that he didn’t look up from, and as Sanghyuk entered he casually turned another page. His eyes, however, seemed fixated on a certain point, his reading almost certainly an affectation. Apart from that one page turning, he didn’t so much as twitch at Sanghyuk’s presence.   
  
“Jaehwan?” Sanghyuk asked, taking a step towards the bed. The last time they’d seen one another, Jaehwan hadn’t seemed angry at him, not at the end, anyway. He’d just been his usual cold self. Sanghyuk wasn’t sure where he stood. “Uh. Is everything okay? We haven’t seen each other in a—”  
  
“Go away,” Jaehwan said, his mouth barely moving, his eyes still on the book that he wasn’t reading. His tone was silky. Dangerous.   
  
Sanghyuk frowned, pulling back a little. “What? You— I came to see you—”  
  
“I didn’t ask you to.” That same silky tone of voice, cadence pitched so it didn’t seem human at all, utterly vampire. It set Sanghyuk on edge, irritated him.  
  
“I thought you would be pleased, we haven’t seen each other for a while, I just—”  
  
Something whistled through the air, followed by a loud bang which made Sanghyuk jump despite himself. The book Jaehwan had been pretending to read lay at the foot of the wall a short distance from Sanghyuk. Not close enough to have been any risk to him, but close enough.   
  
Sanghyuk was so shocked that for a moment he just gaped at Jaehwan. “What the _fuck_ —”  
  
“The reason we haven’t seen each other recently,” Jaehwan said, “is because you’ve been too busy with your new plaything.”   
  
“New— what are you—” Sanghyuk went silent for a moment before the anger flared up, old and familiar at this point. “You’ve still been following me. I told you to stop and you’re still fucking _following me_.”  
  
“I’m looking out for you,” Jaehwan spat. “Making sure no one hurts you. You don’t understand, Sanghyuk, what there is out there, who would love to hurt you if they only had the chance—”   
  
“Oh, spare me your rationales,” Sanghyuk yelled. “It would be offensive, if it weren’t untrue. I can look after myself and you are _damn_ aware of that. You don’t care about that. You’re just trying to control me, just like always.”   
  
“Are you dating him?” Jaehwan asked, his voice full of something that took Sanghyuk a moment to place. Anger, he knew well in Jaehwan’s voice, but this was different. Loathing, he realised after a moment. Loathing, most likely directed at Sanghyuk. “That— that man, that tall, skinny _twit_ , are you dating him?”  
  
“And what if I was?” Sanghyuk was trembling all over. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to have this fight again. He’d come here to talk things out, not for this. But he couldn’t leave, he couldn’t let Jaehwan have his way. “We’ve been through this so many times, we’ve talked about it so many times, and you always say that you don’t _care_ about what I do—”  
  
“I _do not care_.”   
  
“Then what the fuck, Jaehwan?” Sanghyuk fairly shouted, gesturing around them, at this mess of a situation. He was so confused, and underneath that, he was hurt. He didn’t understand this. “We keep going round and round, and I don’t understand. You never tell me what you’re really thinking, why you’re so mad at me all the fucking time it seems like. I don’t know what I’ve done. What are you _hiding_?”  
  
For a moment, Jaehwan stared at him, looking like a contained thunderstorm, something dark and volatile in his eyes. His chest was heaving as they looked at one another, Jaehwan’s hands curled into fists. Sanghyuk waited.  
  
“I have simply grown tired of watching you sleep with anyone— with _everyone_ ,” Jaehwan finally said, the thunderstorm in him vanishing under a slate of ice. In a moment he was off the bed, on his feet, walking to the book that he had thrown and picking it up like he hadn’t almost put a dent in the wall. “I always just would have thought that you would be more discerning in who you fuck. But despite that I have offered you everything you could want in that regard, you’re stubborn, and insist on spreading yourself around. It’s unseemly, and I’m certainly very glad that I am incapable of contracting sexual diseases.”   
  
All the air seemed to leave Sanghyuk’s lungs for a moment. “You bastard,” he gasped out, “you complete fucking _bastard_.”  
  
“I’ve watched you,” Jaehwan said, opening his book and flicking through it, his tone as casual suddenly as if they were discussing the weather, “through your bedroom window, although I know that you’ve never seen me. I’ve watched them fuck you, watched you moan for them like you were nothing better than one of those painted whores I used to fuck when I was human.”  
  
“I’m not—”  
  
“Although I suppose,” Jaehwan continued, smoothly talking over the top of him, and Sanghyuk was too angry, too upset, to work out how to speak for a few seconds, “that someone who gives himself to a vampire never was discerning in his bed mates. And I have simply grown tired of it, Sanghyuk.”   
  
“You’re awful,” Sanghyuk said, spitting it out even as he hunched in on himself. “You’re bearable so long as you’re getting your own way, but the second some invisible line is crossed, you turn on me. I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong, Jaehwan. I’m free to do as I like, but I’m not, really, am I? Not when you get so angry at me for it.”   
  
“Tell me,” Jaehwan said, as if Sanghyuk hadn’t even spoken, “how is this new one in bed? You’re dating him, so why are you here, Sanghyuk? To get the sexual fix he can’t sate?”   
  
“I was here because I missed you, and because I hoped you’d open up to me, finally, and we could work this out, but I’m a fool for that, aren’t I?” Sanghyuk cried, and Jaehwan’s face twisted, like someone had pressed silver to his skin. “We haven’t slept together, Jaehwan. I don’t know what he’s like in bed. But even if he’s horrible, it’s better than this. I don’t have to walk on eggshells around him, never knowing when I might accidentally trigger a meltdown. At least there’s a tradeoff I find worthwhile in it, with him. He cares— cares about me.”  
  
Jaehwan began to laugh, hard, his head tipped back, his fangs run out. It gave Sanghyuk goosebumps, it was so chilling of a sound. “Oh, he _cares_ about you. Imagine that. Well, why don’t you run along then? Go be lovers with him, since you won’t find such things here. I told you before, Sanghyuk. I won’t be responsible for your emotional wellbeing.”   
  
“No, but you will apparently be the arbitrator of who I can fuck and what I can do with my life,” Sanghyuk said, “and really, you should know better than that, Jaehwan.”   
  
Jaehwan turned away from him and placed his book on his bedside table. He didn’t turn to Sanghyuk when he asked, “Are you quite finished?”  
  
Sanghyuk sucked in a breath, angry beyond words. Jaehwan was the one pulling a tantrum, but he had the gall to act like this was on _Sanghyuk’s_ shoulders?   
  
“Yes,” Sanghyuk spat. “Finished with this. Finished with you.” That caught Jaehwan’s attention. He whirled, eyes wide, fists clenched, to stare at Sanghyuk. “I can’t be around you, Jaehwan, not like this. I don’t know what your problem is, beyond being a selfish, possessive bastard, but I refuse to indulge you any longer. I refuse to be the dummy that you batter your anger against because you have a fucking miserable life. I deserve better than this.”  
  
“And what is better?” Jaehwan asked through gritted teeth. “That— that bumbling boy? He— he can’t—” Jaehwan cut himself off, and for a flash, he looked furious. “He can’t fuck you like I can, and you’re telling me he’s _better_?”  
  
“Maybe,” Sanghyuk said, wondering how Jaehwan could miss that fantastic sex didn’t make up for _this_. “Maybe not. But right now, anything is better than you.”   
  
“Get out, then,” Jaehwan said, snarling, gesturing at the door sharply. “Leave me. But if you leave now, then stay gone. I don’t want to be your orgasm on tap for— for whenever that inept boy can’t get you off. I deserve better than _that_.”  
  
“Do you even listen to yourself?” Sanghyuk snapped, and he turned, and left the room.   
  
Jaehwan didn’t try to stop him, didn’t come after him as he stormed through the silent house, as still as it was when he had first walked in. Like the house was unaware of what had gone on inside it and had been undisturbed. Sanghyuk envied it.   
  
Outside, on the street, he walked the few blocks to his car apparently on autopilot, his feet taking the steps necessary to get him there while his brain idled on empty. He felt drained, completely and utterly. He wasn’t even going over the argument in his head, trying to work out where to place the blame, what he could have done to diffuse the situation, what could be salvaged from it. Instead his mind was entirely blank, and he remembered very little of the journey from leaving the alley that led to Jaehwan’s house, and being inside his car, the keys in the ignition.   
  
He stared forward, looking at his reflection in the darkened windscreen, gripping the steering wheel. He looked drawn— no, he looked shell shocked. He had no idea what had just happened. He had gone in there with hope, small and fleeting, and had it dashed to pieces in the face of Jaehwan’s antagonism. And where had that come from, he wondered, what had he done so _wrong_?   
  
Sanghyuk had been sleeping with other people for over a year now. And Jaehwan had never seemed happy about it, but— why? Why now, why had Jaehwan chosen to get so angry now? Had he simply finally snapped?  
  
It was strange, to suddenly realise that the words that one had spat out in anger were, in fact, true. He knew now that he couldn’t keep going like this, couldn’t keep letting Jaehwan’s anger rule him. Jaehwan was too inflexible, and so it had been left to Sanghyuk to bend, and he had broken instead. He was done.  
  
When the tears came, they surprised him. He hiccuped but found that he was unable to stop them for a while. The sun was rising over the horizon before he started the engine on the car.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’m just saying,” Hongbin said lightly as they walked into the house, “it really wouldn’t be too difficult to teach you.”   
  
Wonshik eyed the contraption in Hongbin’s hands, the one he called a camera. There were so many strange component parts that he was surprised it couldn’t walk and talk all on its own. “I’ll just break it,” he said. “You know that.” He thought, of all people, Hongbin would know the dangers best of all. He had broken one of Hongbin’s cameras when they were human, in the early days of their relationship.   
  
Hongbin smiled. “You’re not as clumsy as you think you are,” he said, “not anymore.” He kissed Wonshik’s cheek and flitted away, presumably to put his camera away safely. Wonshik was glad he had saved it back when Hongbin had first been turned, glad that he had tucked it away into a box and made sure that it had survived, if only to see how happy picking up the hobby made Hongbin.   
  
He walked into the living room, on the way to the kitchen to grab himself a blood bag. The room was pretty much as it had been when they had left earlier that night, but Jaehwan’s laptop was lying on the floor, smashed almost in two. It was certainly beyond repair, even Wonshik knew that.  
  
He picked it up gingerly, although there wasn’t much more damage he could do to it. It looked like it had been thrown, or stamped on, the screen practically hanging off it. Still holding it carefully, he made his way to Jaehwan’s bedroom, remembering just at the last moment to knock.  
  
There was a pause. “Go away,” Jaehwan said.  
  
Wonshik opened the door, taking a few steps into the room. Jaehwan sat up from where he had been laying on the bed, seemingly doing nothing more than staring at the ceiling. Wonshik held the laptop out. “Uh?” he said, highly intelligently, and saw something flash in Jaehwan’s eyes, which made Wonshik cringe internally, waiting for a scathing comment.   
  
Instead Jaehwan lay back down, folding his arms behind his head so it was pillowed against his hands. He looked tense. “It look too long to load something,” he said, voice weirdly flat.  
  
“Well, yeah, the wifi here sucks, you’re stealing it from above ground.” Wonshik looked at the laptop, then back at Jaehwan. “Is— is everything okay?”   
  
“Get the fuck out, Wonshik,” Jaehwan said, and the sudden push against him, the sudden overwhelming urge to follow the instruction, told Wonshik that he was being dismissed. He left the room quickly before resisting the instruction became painful.   
  
Hongbin had apparently finished packing away his camera and was undressing for bed, tugging his shirt over his head. He had his back to Wonshik but he must had sensed his presence because he said, “Ah, good, come help me out of my pants.”   
  
“Uh,” Wonshik said. Hongbin turned to look at him, eyebrow raised at the noise he had just made, distinctly not-vampire, and went still at the sight of the broken laptop in Wonshik’s hands.  
  
“He’s going to kill you for that,” he said. “What did you even _do_?”  
  
“It wasn’t me,” Wonshik said, setting it down on their dresser. “He said he did it himself because something wasn’t loading quickly enough.”   
  
Hongbin frowned. “That’s... new.” Wonshik nodded in agreement. Hongbin added tentatively, unsurely, “I can— can smell Sanghyuk. Do you think they fought?” _Again_ was left unsaid.   
  
“I don’t know,” Wonshik said truthfully. “I mean, he doesn’t usually break his own stuff, even when they do fight. Maybe it’s connected to what happened a few weeks ago.” Both he and Hongbin had been aware of Jaehwan throwing some sort of physical tantrum in one of the abandoned bedrooms, but had waited until Jaehwan had gone out before they had went to see what had happened. The sight of the destroyed room had been disquieting, to say the least, but Jaehwan hadn’t spoken about it. Hadn’t really been any more or less his obnoxious self.   
  
They had been avoiding him the best they could though recently, hadn’t seen much of him. It was easier to just do that than trying to talk to him. Sometimes talking to Jaehwan was like poking an angry bear with a stick made out of even angrier wasps.   
  
Hongbin sighed. He flopped backwards onto the bed, shirtless, the buttons on his jeans undone. Wonshik wished he had a heart beat just so that he could have the physical sensation of his heart rate racing back. “This is starting to get somewhat ridiculous.”   
  
Wonshik nodded his head in silent agreement, but decided to drop the subject in favor of doing what Hongbin had suggested earlier and helped him out of his pants   
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk took a sip from the coffee that he had bought from one of the few places still open this late at night. He hated coffee, hated the nasty taste it left in his mouth for hours afterwards, but he still wasn’t sleeping well and needed it to stay awake.   
  
Hakyeon sat patiently next to him on their usual bench. He hadn’t, it had to be admitted, reached the level of zen that Hongbin had seemingly endless supplies of, but becoming a vampire seemed to have calmed him down some. Or at least, it had seemed that way recently. Perhaps forever was too long to keep worrying about everything.   
  
Sanghyuk took a deep breath. Opened his mouth, then closed it again. Considered what to say. He saw Hakyeon smiling, just softly.   
  
Even so, it took Sanghyuk another few moments before he spoke. “I went to see Jaehwan, to talk to him, like you guys suggested.”   
  
“And?” Hakyeon’s voice was suddenly tense, wound tight like it was close to snapping. The smile was completely gone from his face.  
  
“It backfired.”   
  
Hakyeon chewed his bottom lip, looking dismayed in a way that Sanghyuk thought looked strangely human on him. “I— I— yes.”   
  
“You heard?”   
  
“No, I didn’t hear anything. I haven’t spoken to either Wonshik or Hongbin in a couple of days. I just— Taekwoon warned me, that it might not go well. Talking to Jaehwan, I mean.”  
  
Sanghyuk laughed, without a trace of humor. “Well, we all could have predicted that, couldn’t we? Talking to Jaehwan rarely seems to go well. But oh, Hakyeon, I thought — I don’t know, I thought that maybe I would be able to get through to him.”   
  
“Tell me what happened,” Hakyeon said softly.   
  
Sanghyuk did so, telling Hakyeon everything that had been said, every word Jaehwan had spat at him. It had been going around in his head for two days now, the conversation playing over and over again. He had done his best to be normal, to keep doing his job like he was supposed to do, and nobody seemed to have noticed anything was off, so perhaps he had done a good job.   
  
It felt good to be able to talk about it, all the same. Hakyeon listened quietly, not interrupting, though Sanghyuk had expected him to. He sat with vampire stillness, his mouth twitching at certain things Sanghyuk said, although it certainly didn’t seem from amusement. When Sanghyuk finished, his voice trailing off weakly, Hakyeon sat in silence for a few beats.  
  
“I’m sorry, Sanghyuk,” he said.   
  
Sanghyuk gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re not the one who made him react like that.”   
  
Hakyeon shook his head. “I should have— I— I don’t know.”   
  
“I think,” Sanghyuk began, went quiet, and then surged on ahead, “I think it’s for the best, you know?”  
  
“Yes, maybe,” Hakyeon said. Sanghyuk smiled at the considerable amount of relief in his voice. “I— you know how I feel about it all, but it’s only ever been out of consideration for you, Sanghyuk.”  
  
“I know that,” Sanghyuk said. “It’s just— there were times at the start where it was great, you know? I used to really have fun with him. But not any more, not for a long time.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s healthy,” Hakyeon said. “Not like this.”  
  
“If it ever was,” Sanghyuk said, lips quirking, and Hakyeon smiled at that. “You’re right though. I think it’s best that we just stay away from each other. I think he needs his time to really figure out what the hell is going on with him.”   
  
“And you need your own time too.”  
  
“Yeah.” Sanghyuk looked down at the coffee he was still clutching in his hands, and then back at Hakyeon. He felt weak suddenly. “I’m sad about it.” Sadder than he felt he really had a right to be.  
  
“Oh, kiddo,” Hakyeon whispered, and wrapped him in a hug that Sanghyuk didn’t protest about.   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan was laying face down in his couch when he felt the familiar press on the wards which told him Taekwoon was coming to pay him a visit. Wonshik and Hongbin had disappeared before he had ventured out of his room, and he hadn’t given much thought to where they had gone, but perhaps they had gone to tattle on him to his older brother.   
  
He rolled over onto his back and arranged himself on the couch so that he looked the very picture of affected disinterest, leaning up against one of the arms, his arm slung casually over the back. Pride alone forced him to look like he hadn’t been doing what he had been occupied with for most of the night, which was moping. It was what he did best now, since all other forms of entertainment had been stripped away from him.   
  
Taekwoon came into the house so quickly and silently that it felt rather like Jaehwan blinked and he was simply there. Vampires moved quietly as a general rule but Taekwoon’s natural taciturnity afforded him a quietness of step that Jaehwan found exceedingly creepy sometimes.  
  
“You are exceedingly creepy sometimes,” he said.   
  
Taekwoon ignored that, which was no surprise. “You will lose him like this,” he said. How like Taekwoon, to simply arrive at the point with little to no lead up.   
  
“What,” Jaehwan drawled, “no small talk first? No casual mention of the weather? How is it up there, anyway, I’m afraid I haven’t ventured out today.”   
  
Taekwoon was silent, staring at him.   
  
Jaehwan said, in mock ignorance, “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”   
  
Taekwoon narrowed his eyes at him, and when he spoke, his voice was colder than normal. “Do not play dumb with me, Jaehwan. We both know that you are, in reality, far too clever for your own good.”   
  
“You flatter me,” Jaehwan said lazily. He let his head hang back off the arm of the couch. “Then get to the point, brother of mine, and put us both out of our misery.”   
  
“Sanghyuk.”   
  
There had been no doubt from the very beginning as to the subject of their conversation, but the sound of his name, the pushing of the point, still made Jaehwan tense, lifting his head so he could glare at Taekwoon. “What about him?”   
  
“You will lose him permanently if you keep this up,” Taekwoon said.   
  
“I don’t care,” Jaehwan said, teeth gritted, his words hissing. “Why should I care, that he is gone?”  
  
He saw rather than heard Taekwoon sigh. “Jaehwan,” he said, shortly, simply. Disapprovingly, like a father berating a child.   
  
“Don’t,” Jaehwan warned.  
  
“You care,” Taekwoon said. “I know you care, that you care a lot. I’ve seen the way you look at him, and Jaehwan, it can still be salvaged, maybe, provided you stop acting like such a child about it.”   
  
The anger boiled up in Jaehwan faster than he could think and he kept himself from rushing Taekwoon by the skin of his teeth. He had some self-preservation skills intact, apparently. Instead he rose to his feet, trying for imperious, fearing that he had achieved merely a pretense of it.   
  
“I don’t care!” he insisted loudly. “He’s merely a stupid human, and a filthy one at that. He slinks around in the dark and gives his body to anyone who can flatter his oversized ego, and one day he will probably have his throat torn out and I do _not_ care.”   
  
Taekwoon was silent for a few long seconds after Jaehwan’s little tirade. When he spoke his voice was heavy with disgust. “This is exactly what I am talking about, Jaehwan.”   
  
“Oh, fuck off,” Jaehwan snapped, tired of it now. “If you have come here merely to lecture me on how to live my life, then go away. I refuse to be condescended to. Your tawdry love affair with a human is not the life I’m willing to live.”   
  
“So you have said,” Taekwoon murmured, “multiple times. But the reality does not seem to be following your wishes.”   
  
If he had remained a moment longer, it was entirely possible that Jaehwan would have attacked him, but instead Taekwoon was gone, leaving before Jaehwan could react. Jaehwan almost wanted to chase after him so he could throw something at him, but that was pointless, and a tad soap opera dramatic besides. He would not be _cliche_.   
  
He stood stock still in the middle of the living room, willing the anger to abate, trying to bury it under the ice which had become his go-to solution over the past few days. Letting that anger out only made the people around him look at him like he was something to be _pitied_ , and he wouldn’t allow them to do that to him. He wasn’t going to become someone pathetic enough to need the pity of others.   
  
Who did Taekwoon think he was, anyway, coming around here and acting like he knew what the fuck Jaehwan was going through. Taekwoon was attuned to the wards in a way that meant Jaehwan couldn’t simply lock him out, but sometimes he wished that he could, just so he wouldn’t have to deal with this sort of thing. Taekwoon’s visits always seemed to end with Jaehwan bloody and broken, or with him furious. He would, at this point, almost prefer the pain.   
  
He stormed through into the kitchen, snatching himself a blood bag from the fridge and sticking a straw into it so roughly that he almost spilled the whole thing over himself. He growled, ready to break something with his bare hands again, but then that was lost in sudden recollection of what he had just said to Taekwoon.   
  
_One day he will probably have his throat torn out and I do not care._  
  
He threw the untouched blood bag on the kitchen counter and fled the house, racing to the surface as quickly as if he were trying to emulate Taekwoon. He hoped, would have prayed if he thought it would help, that he would find Sanghyuk at home, but instead he found Sanghyuk closer to the east end than anyone should have felt comfortable in, even if that nest had been taken care of.   
  
He didn’t let Sanghyuk realise he was there, but he kept watch, watching over him from a few blocks away as he did his rounds, walking around like he wasn’t a constant step away from being killed. It didn’t have to be a vampire, Jaehwan knew that, there were more ways for humans to die than there were hairs on Sanghyuk’s head, and the thought of harm coming to any of them left him with sweaty palms and a tightness in his throat that felt horrifically human.   
  
A car coming around a corner too fast, a human with one of their endless array of weapons, a fumble while out on the hunt— hell, even just an accident, Sanghyuk tripping over something, could cause his death. What had Jaehwan been thinking to leave him alone? If Jaehwan wasn’t there to watch him, to make sure nothing happened —  
  
Jaehwan laughed, bitterly. He had been lying, of course he had. He cared so much about Sanghyuk that he felt ill with it.   
  
But not caring was so much safer than caring. Just look at Sanghyuk, walking around like nothing had happened recently, like Jaehwan hadn’t thrown him out of his life not a week earlier. Not caring was working out well for him, so much better than it was for Jaehwan.   
  
He could not stop this, he realized. No matter how much he screamed and insisted he did not care, it would never make it come true. Jaehwan hated himself for this, and he’d hate Sanghyuk too, if he weren’t so in love. No, he could not stop himself falling in love, no matter how much he wanted to tear these feelings out of himself, and he also knew he could not lose Sanghyuk to a slip up on a hunt. Losing Sanghyuk, even if Sanghyuk wasn’t his to lose— it would destroy Jaehwan. He knew it in his bones. He could not withstand losing Sanghyuk.  
  
And if Sanghyuk insisted on hunting solo, that was going to make this all the harder. Jaehwan was going to have to take drastic measures.  
  
He followed Sanghyuk, keeping his distance, unhappy with how far he had to hang back. It took another hour, before Sanghyuk finally headed back towards HQ, and the Lost had Jaehwan all turned around before long. But that was fine. Sanghyuk would be safe in HQ, and Jaehwan— he had someone else he needed to see before the sun rose.  
  
Jaehwan flittered through the shadows, moving quickly, until he was on a familiar street, entering an equally familiar shop. The bell above the door tinkled as he stepped in, and he felt the protective spellwork of the place press over his skin before it parted to let him through. Once inside, the myriad charms on the shelves chattered at him, some hostile, some not.  
  
Movement, to Jaehwan’s left. Kyungsoo was there, and he hadn’t been a moment before. It wasn’t easy, to sneak up on a vampire, but Kyungsoo was very good at it. He was a terrifying little creature.  
  
“You know how I feel about you coming by without an appointment,” he said, glaring up at Jaehwan through his thick, round glasses.  
  
“Bit of an emergency, I’m afraid,” Jaehwan said, grinning sweetly.  
  
“Those cost extra,” Kyungsoo said flatly. “What do you want?”  
  
Jaehwan stared down, into Kyungsoo’s dark eyes. “I need you to make me an amulet that will conceal me from a hunter’s wards.”  
  
——  
  
Once, when he was a kid, Sanghyuk’s parents had taken him to the aquarium, because he was going through one of those phases all kids seem to go through. He’d spent a few months on dinosaurs and then shifted to sharks with an intensity that may have been a little disturbing in a child of ten. They’d driven all the way here because his dad had heard that there was a shark tunnel and Sanghyuk had been desperate to go.   
  
Almost a decade later, he could still admit that he got a kick out of the shark tunnel.   
  
When Jongsuk had suggested going to the aquarium for a date, Sanghyuk had been skeptical. There’ll be children there, he’d warned, and Jongsuk had smiled and just shrugged. But now that they were actually there, part of Sanghyuk was glad of it, of the children running around, their parents trailing after them, all the other apparent couples walking side by side. It was normal in a nice way, in a way that Sanghyuk had perhaps been craving. It certainly got his mind off things.  
  
“See,” Jongsuk said, sliding his gaze across to Sanghyuk. A half smile was playing on his lips. “Isn’t this fun?”   
  
Sanghyuk thought about denying it but the truth was, he was enjoying himself. There didn’t seem to be much point in saying otherwise, especially since he figured Jongsuk would be able to tell he was lying. “It is,” he agreed.  
  
Jongsuk’s smile grew wider, and he looked pleased with himself. Sanghyuk couldn’t help but smile back at him.   
  
A small child squeezed between their legs to plaster his face up against the octopus tank. Sanghyuk took a step back to give him some more room, frowning, which brought him back to press against Jongsuk’s shoulder. He took the opportunity to sling an arm around Sanghyuk’s waist like it was nothing.   
  
Maybe it was nothing.   
  
“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Jongsuk said, almost into his ear, as he guided him away from the octopus tank and the gaggle of children that was gathering. Jongsuk seemed to have picked up on Sanghyuk’s general disdain for children.   
  
“I’m here with you, aren’t I?” Sanghyuk said, batting his eyelids in a dramatic way that never failed to make Jongsuk laugh.   
  
It didn’t fail now. Once he’d stopped, he said, “I just thought it might be relaxing. Even if there are a lot of kids around.”   
  
Sanghyuk gave him a smile. It _was_ relaxing, to play at being normal every once in a while. Their last date had been a week ago, before Sanghyuk had taken up a few extra shifts at work to cover someone who was sick, and then one of Jongsuk’s projects had had a deadline and he hadn’t been around. It was nice to see him again.   
  
Jongsuk seemed to be able to read his mind sometimes. “I missed you,” he said, murmuring into Sanghyuk’s ear. His voice was low, almost intimate, and Sanghyuk was unable to stop the shiver that ran down his spine. Jongsuk’s hand was still on his hip, his body pressed close and warm. Sanghyuk eyed him, wondering if maybe—  
  
Jongsuk stepped back, out of his space, returning the distance he always seemed to maintain between their bodies. Sanghyuk tried to mask his sigh, but he didn’t think he’d done it very well.   
  
“It’s only been a week,” Sanghyuk said, smiling to cover the sigh.   
  
“I know,” Jongsuk said, smiling back. “I still missed you.”   
  
Sanghyuk didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. He took Jongsuk’s hand and led him over to a space around the petting area. He pushed Jongsuk’s hand into the water and laughed as he shuddered as his fingers brushed against a starfish.   
  
Sanghyuk let him go, grinning as Jongsuk grumbled, and put his own hand into the water, letting his fingers stroke over the back of a ray that was swimming past. He had liked this as a kid too, the different sensations.   
  
He glanced at Jongsuk. “Thank you,” he said.   
  
Jongsuk beamed at him. “What for?”   
  
Sanghyuk motioned between them, then around the area. “For this. It’s nice, to do something different.” It hadn’t been until he’d gotten out of his comfort zone here that he had realised just how much his life had seemed to rotate around work, his apartment, meeting Hakyeon and the others. Really, he’d just switched Jaehwan’s house for Jongsuk’s apartment, which was a road he didn’t want to go down. He still couldn’t quite think of Jaehwan without a frown, and Jongsuk would definitely take that the wrong way.   
  
“It’s nice,” he repeated, and Jongsuk leaned over and brushed his lips across Sanghyuk’s cheek while pretending to be touching one of the rays floating past.   
  
——  
  
For Sanghyuk‘s solo activities, he’d been assigned a small section in the north-east of the city. His section was smaller than it would have been with two of them out there, and it wasn’t exactly known for being a vampire hot spot, but he would take what he was given. After he’d requested to go solo, it had taken them a week to sort out his district, a week before he was allowed out. By the end of all that paperwork, he’d thought he might start breaking things in the office if they hadn’t let him go out and hunt soon. Only the knowledge that he had already pushed matters almost too far even for asking for a solo spot had kept him from rushing the proceedings.  
  
But then he was given his place, and that was that. He’d already become very familiar with the area, exploring all the little alleys, the twists and turns. He was fairly content with things, and Sungjae, at this point, seemed to have come around. Part of that was probably down to the hunter that he had been paired with, who, like Sanghyuk had requested, was older, more experienced. There didn’t seem to be the warm camaraderie that he and Sungjae had shared, but Sungjae was learning a lot from him, and seemed happy enough.  
  
Everyone else in HQ seemed to think he was completely insane, though. A couple of them were avoiding him, as though they thought he was going to infect them with something. He had heard a lot of the rumours running around about him, some of them just by overhearing them, but most of them because Ilhoon kept telling them to him, like he thought that knowing what other people thought was going to change his mind.   
  
Ilhoon had seemed disappointed when that hadn’t happened.   
  
He lifted his arms above his head, stretching. God, he loved being out on the field, even when it was quiet and dull. Just being able to walk around, to fill his lungs with the cold, crisp air, made him feel so much happier than before. Which wasn’t to say he had been unhappy before— he had gotten what he wanted in his job, Sungjae wasn’t angry with him, and things with Jongsuk were going well. But this was different. He felt a lot more at peace, of late.  
  
His wards were silent, still, and he was so lax that he almost missed the glint of something near the mouth of an alleyway, something that wasn’t usually there. He turned, to focus on it, seeing a vague pale shape on the asphalt.   
  
Sanghyuk walked to the edge of the alley, hand against the dagger at his side, although there was no sign of movement, and his wards were still quiet. There was a girl, lying face down on the ground, just inside the mouth of the alley. She looked young even from the back, and when he turned her body over, he found that she couldn’t have been more than twelve at most. Her skin had taken on that strange, translucent look of someone who had been drained, blood congealed against her throat around two, gaping puncture wounds.   
  
It was never easy, ever okay, but— “Christ,” he muttered, feeling the shake his hands and hating it, “you’re just a _kid_. What were you even doing out here so late?”   
  
But there were plenty of homeless children out on the streets, particularly easy targets for vampires. Her eyes were still open, expression glazed; she had been glamoured right to the very end then, at least. Small mercies. Sanghyuk shut her eyelids, laid her back down on the ground.   
  
The light shone on something further into the alley, glimmering just a bit. Sanghyuk stood and slowly made his way in further, letting his owl eyes tattoo kick in to help him where the light wouldn’t reach. A bit further down, further down that it certainly wouldn’t have been able to be seen from the street, there was another body.   
  
This one was of a young male, or what appeared to be a young male. Sanghyuk didn’t need years of training to know that he was looking at a dead vampire, one who had been killed in a particularly messy way. From the looks of things, his heart had been ripped clean out of his chest, a massive, gaping hole in the vamp’s torso. Sanghyuk turned his head this way and that, but there was still no movement anywhere, and he didn’t want to go looking just then.  
  
He stood between the two bodies, like a tableau lain out for him. What had _happened_? The vamp hadn’t gone very far after its kill before it had been killed itself, that was for sure, and judging by the blood splattered everywhere, there had been a minor struggle. But— he had no idea what could do this to a vampire. A really mad demon, or maybe a rogue sorcerer.  
  
A shiver ran up Sanghyuk’s spine. Well, he knew one thing. He needed to go report this to HQ, because whatever the thing was, he didn’t want to stick around to see if it would come back.   
  
——  
  
It was nearing dawn, when Wonshik and Hongbin got home. He had to admit, they’d been cutting it a bit close lately, mostly because they didn’t want to run into Jaehwan at home.  
  
Wonshik cracked a wide yawn as they walked through the front door, Hongbin leading him by the hand gently. “Tired?” Hongbin asked, and Wonshik didn’t have to look at him to know there was a soft smile on his face.  
  
"Yeah," Wonshik said, squeezing Hongbin's hand lightly.  
  
"Me too," Hongbin said. "I think maybe we should—" He stopped speaking, stopped walking, and Wonshik stopped too, to look at him. "Do you smell that?"  
  
Wonshik inhaled deeply. The house smelled like it usually did, ancient, earthy, with a slight tang of blood. "No?"  
  
"I smell blood." Hongbin tipped his head back a bit, sniffing at the air with a frown on his face.  
  
Wonshik smiled, a little bemused. "It always smells like blood in here, just a bit.”  
  
“No,” Hongbin murmured, “it— it smells like vamp blood.”  
  
That made Wonshik breathe in again, but he couldn’t detect any of the nuances that Hongbin apparently could, not when the scent was so faint. “I can’t smell it.” He looked at Hongbin askance. “You think Jaehwan is okay?”  
  
“It is not Jaehwan’s blood,” Hongbin murmured.  
  
“That’s— weird,” Wonshik murmured, and he and Hongbin shared a look. He wondered if Hongbin was as unnerved as he was.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk propped his head up against the back of his couch, letting his eyes drift shut slowly. The movie that he had picked to watch was one that he had seen multiple times, and he had chosen it for that very reason. It meant that he could watch it without thinking too much.  
  
Jongsuk’s arm tightened around his shoulder, hand squeezing lightly. “Are you tired?”   
  
Sanghyuk gave a little shrug, noncommittal. “I had the closing shift at work again. There was an incident with some milk. I didn’t get home until early morning.”   
  
Jongsuk looked concerned. “They make you stay that late? Even though it’s so dangerous?”  
  
Sanghyuk hummed under his breath. “It’s okay. I have my car, after all.”   
  
“That’s not really the point,” Jongsuk said. “Even just walking to your car in the parking lot is dangerous. It doesn’t seem like it should be legal.”   
  
Sanghyuk couldn’t help but smile. “Lots of people work even when it’s dark. Hell, it’s winter now. You don’t leave your office until after sundown.”   
  
Jongsuk grumbled something under his breath, his arm still tight around Sanghyuk’s shoulder. It was nice and heavy and warm, and Sanghyuk was more tired than he was really letting on. Last night had been yet another night where he had found a dead victim side by side with a dead vampire, which made it the third time in two weeks. This time the vampire had been stabbed, through the heart, a clean and quick kill. It was the kind of clean kill that Sanghyuk could only dream of achieving.   
  
Finding dead vampire bodies, it turned out, required almost as much paperwork as killing them yourself did. No one was able to tell him if it was a rogue sorcerer, or if they were dealing with something else completely. It was odd, because the first two kills had been messy, hearts torn out, but this latest one was clean, like a veteran hunter had executed it. They didn’t know if they were even dealing with the same culprit. All Sanghyuk knew was that it was leaving a lot of people shaken, including him.  
  
It was annoying, too, since it was rattling him and leaving him with no outlet with which to take it out on. Normally if he wasn’t able to hunt, he would turn to sex, but he wasn’t about to go see Jaehwan, not after how vicious he’d been the last time Sanghyuk had seen him, he really didn’t need that hostility in his life— and Jongsuk was just being _weird_ in that respect.  
  
He didn’t fall asleep, not really, but he knew that he closed his eyes for just a moment and when he opened them again the movie was switched off, along with the television. A quick glance at the clock told him that it had only been five minutes, so the movie couldn’t have been over yet.   
  
“What?” he asked, intelligently, blinking at Jongsuk, who had been trying to pull his arm out from behind Sanghyuk’s neck.  
  
“Sorry,” Jongsuk said softly. “I just— you seemed like you had fallen asleep so I was just going to, I don’t know, get you a blanket or something and let you sleep.”   
  
Sanghyuk frowned, feeling somewhat mortified; he hadn’t meant to actually fall asleep on a date. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just— I’ve seen the movie, I just closed my eyes. Don’t go, please.”   
  
Jongsuk hesitated, then pulled his arm away, leaving the back of Sanghyuk’s neck cold. “I should really leave anyway, it’s getting late, and I have to be up early for work tomorrow—”   
  
He had begun to rise to his feet. Sanghyuk gaped at him, unable to believe this, unable to believe _him_. When he had invited Jongsuk over to his apartment, he had thought that his intentions were pretty damned obvious. Even if he had fallen asleep — god, he would never get over that, how fucking _dumb_ — the obvious solution to that would have been Jongsuk _joining_ him in bed, not tucking him in and then running out on him.  
  
He reached out and grabbed Jongsuk’s wrist. Jongsuk turned to look at him, surprised, and when Sanghyuk tugged, he sat back down on the couch heavily. Sanghyuk struggled for words for a few moments, his brain still a little asleep, and in the end he just blurted out, “Why won’t you fuck me?”   
  
Jongsuk’s eyes widened so fast that it was almost comical. “W-what?” he croaked out.  
  
Sanghyuk decided to take advantage of his surprise and pressed on. “You won’t fuck me. We’ve been going out for weeks now and you barely even touch me, never mind anything more. Hell, Jongsuk, at this point I’d take just a really heavy make out session.”   
  
“I— I’m—”  
  
“You keep refusing to come up to my apartment after a date — and believe me, I’ve been trying, and I know that you know what I’ve been doing. And then tonight, what, you were just going to leave, while I was sleeping? I invited you over to my apartment for a reason, and it wasn’t so I could fall asleep in front of fucking Captain America.”   
  
Jongsuk gaped at him for a moment and then snapped his mouth shut. The blush seemed to literally rise up from his body, until Sanghyuk thought he could feel the physical heat. Jongsuk pulled his hand out of Sanghyuk’s hold and looked down at the floor, twisting his fingers together. “I— I didn’t want to…” He trailed off, biting his bottom lip.  
  
“What?” Sanghyuk asked, a little exasperated.  
  
Jongsuk lifted his head. “I didn’t want to disrespect you like that,” he said, and Sanghyuk practically jerked away from him, he was so surprised by that response. “I like you, Sanghyuk, I like you a lot, so I didn’t want to just— make it about sex, or something. I didn’t want to rush you into anything you might not have been ready for.”   
  
Sanghyuk couldn’t work out what to say for a good minute or so, just staring at Jongsuk. “You haven’t made a move on me,” he said slowly, “because you _respect_ me?”   
  
Jongsuk shifted on the couch. “Yeah,” he said. “And I mean, you’re quite a bit younger than me, aren’t you? So I didn’t know— I mean, we haven’t talked about that kind of stuff, I don’t know how much experience you have, so I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”   
  
_Oh, you’d be surprised how much experience I have_ , Sanghyuk thought. He felt a twinge of something that felt utterly unfamiliar and realised after a moment that it was _almost_ shame. Jongsuk was so fucking nice, and Sanghyuk was doing nothing but lying to him.   
  
“I have— I have experience,” he said, watching Jongsuk’s face for any signs of disgust or disdain. Instead, Jongsuk’s features seemed to soften with relief.  
  
“Oh,” he said.   
  
“Quite a lot of experience,” Sanghyuk added. “You know, considering.”   
  
“If you’re trying to put me off, or testing me, then it’s not going to work,” Jongsuk said. “I don’t _care_ about how much you’ve had, whether it’s a lot or nothing at all. I just— I want you to be as comfortable as you can be in this relationship, Sanghyuk.”   
  
_Urgh_ , Sanghyuk thought.  
  
“You know what would make me really comfortable,” he said. “If you were to fuck me. Like, tonight. Right here and now, on my bed. Because I bought condoms and lube and everything and I don’t want those to go to waste.”   
  
Jongsuk swallowed, shifting a little away from Sanghyuk on the couch. “I— but you were tired?”   
  
“Not that tired,” Sanghyuk said. He tugged Jongsuk towards him, nuzzled against his cheek. One of Jongsuk’s hands hovered before touching his arm gently, like he was unsure if he even had permission for that.   
  
“Please,” Sanghyuk whispered. “I told you, I’ve been trying to get you to do this for a while now, I want this. I think about it all the time. I just— I want you to fuck me, Jongsuk. I _need_ you to fuck me.”   
  
“Oh _shit_ ,” Jongsuk said, the first time Sanghyuk had ever heard him swear, and he turned and kissed Sanghyuk hard, harder than he had ever kissed Sanghyuk before, and Sanghyuk fell back onto the couch and tugged Jongsuk down on top of him, grinning into the kiss.  
  
——  
  
The sun had been down for almost an hour before Jaehwan ventured outside of the house. Wonshik and Hongbin had not been home for the day, but he would have felt it if Wonshik had been killed, so no doubt they had merely spent the daylight hours in Taekwoon’s tiny hovel. The thought of four people sharing such a small space made Jaehwan shudder.   
  
They had been doing that a lot recently. He had been able to sense it when they came home, could feel their presence on the wards, but he had been spending more and more time outside of the house recently, and so had little knowledge of what they were actually getting up to.   
  
Whenever they were home, though, they kept giving Jaehwan such maddening looks of pity that Jaehwan wanted nothing more than to drive them right back out again. He had managed to do so, a couple of times, and had been granted a number of hours of complete peace and quiet, his house his own again after the past couple years of entertaining nothing but ungrateful children and humans.   
  
Tonight, though, he was out again. He was out because it appeared that he, out of all the others, was the only one who was taking steps to protect their one last human. Looking at the ones who had called themselves his mentors, his friends, they seemed perfectly happy to let him run around on his own attacking random vampires and getting himself almost certainly killed. It was like they didn’t even _care_.   
  
Jaehwan flitted through the shadows, trying to gain a hold on the trace of Sanghyuk’s scent. He would be hunting again tonight, Jaehwan knew. He had a schedule, of sorts, which hadn’t taken Jaehwan long to memorise, even after it had changed when he had dropped his partner. He would be out hunting, and Jaehwan now knew the section of city he always patrolled, so now it was simply figuring out his exact location. He never patrolled the same way twice.  
  
He found Sanghyuk, in the end, in the more southern end of his hunting territory. The street he was on held closed boutiques and restaurants, one convenience store on the corner that looked like it might still be open. He allowed himself to slink to an alley, so he could watch Sanghyuk pass by from up close, hidden in darkness. The new amulet around his neck, gold, heavy, was warm against Jaehwan’s icy skin.   
  
Kyungsoo had made it for him, and it had costed Jaehwan quite a lot of blood as well as some of his older artifacts. It would have cost more, had he not had a specific hunter he needed to remain hidden from.   
  
Sanghyuk didn’t look into the alleyway Jaehwan was hiding in, didn’t slow, strode right by. His profile was so lovely, his head held high, back straight.   
  
Jaehwan held in a sigh, then flit back onto a nearby roof. He wasn’t going to bother tailing Sanghyuk, it would be pointless. Tailing Sanghyuk would just mean waiting around for another vampire to attack him, and then possibly having to interfere, and Sanghyuk would get pissed at that, no matter that Jaehwan was keeping him _safe_. He didn’t like to be thought of as weak, although of course, to a vampire, he unfortunately was.   
  
No, Jaehwan wasn’t going to interfere if Sanghyuk was attacked. He was going to make sure that he never got the chance to be.  
  
There was a vampire a couple of streets away, not close enough that Sanghyuk would be able to feel him, but close enough to be a threat, possibly, in the near future. It was feasting when Jaehwan dropped out of the shadows into the alley it was in, so engrossed that it didn’t seem to notice Jaehwan for a few seconds.   
  
It had the body of a teenage male, and had apparently managed to attack and overpower a young couple. The woman was already dead, sprawled face down on the ground. The man in the arms of the vampire was still alive, and when Jaehwan interrupted, the vampire lifted his head to snarl at him, and the young man gave a weak gurgle.   
  
“What?” the vampire said, upper lip curling to show fangs, clutching his prey closer to him. “This is my kill, you can’t have it.”   
  
Jaehwan grinned, pressing his tongue to one of his fangs. “Oh, I have no interest in taking your food away from you. That would be most unsporting.”   
  
The vampire snorted and lowered his head again.  
  
“Of course,” Jaehwan continued, “if I so wanted to, I could. Quite easily. You couldn’t stop me.”   
  
The vampire, caught up in bloodlust as it was, grew enraged at this, snarling at Jaehwan, its teeth reddened with blood. “I’d like to see you try.”  
  
“Oh, really?” Jaehwan asked, flitting forward, just that shade of too fast that this vampire, young as it was, would have trouble keeping up with. “Would you like to test that theory out?” The vampire gaped at him, apparently unable to comprehend the fact that he hadn’t been able to keep up with Jaehwan’s movements. “Take a good look at me. Really _look_. Think about it. Could someone like _you_ really stand your own against me?”   
  
The vampire swallowed, almost audibly. His chin and neck was coated with the blood of his victims. In his arms, the young male had stopped moving, his pulse growing sluggish. After a moment, after he had truly looked, the vampire shoved him away and straightened from his hunched pose, taking a nervous step back.   
  
“What— what do you want from me?” he asked.  
  
Jaehwan grinned, reached into his pocket, and drew out a dagger. It was one that Sanghyuk had accidentally left behind one time, and never seemed to realise it, since he had plenty of others, and his favourite was the one that Wonshik had gifted him for his birthday. After the first two kills, where Jaehwan had been forced to use his hands, he had come to see the need for a weapon. Much less messy.  
  
“To kill you,” he said softly.   
  
The vampire turned and tried to flee, but Jaehwan was faster, Jaehwan was _always_ faster, and he grabbed the other vampire around the throat and dragged him towards him and slid the dagger easily between his ribs and into his heart, coolly, calmly, taking his time, being _precise_. He did not like leaving a mess. He preferred to do this cleanly. This vampire was not actively threatening his human, after all; it was merely that the possibility could arise.  
  
The vampire died the moment the blade pierced its heart, and Jaehwan felt the recoil rush noxiously over him. He dropped the body, the dagger slipping out, and rearranged his hair with his free hand. The vampire lay on the ground, face down, in much the same position as the women he had eaten.   
  
He didn’t need to look back to see that the male victim had died somewhere along the way. His heart was utterly still. Jaehwan flitted away onto the rooftop, thinking that it was a shame. He could have done with the sustenance.


	7. Chapter 7

Sanghyuk smiled as Jongsuk tugged him down onto the bed, letting their legs tangle together, Sanghyuk propped up against his chest. Jongsuk gave him the kind of smile that Sanghyuk had, originally, labelled dreamy, and now thought of as sappy. It meant that Jongsuk was going to say something even more sappy.   
  
“You’re perfect,” Jongsuk said, apparently completely serious, his mouth nuzzling behind Sanghyuk’s ear.   
  
Sanghyuk laughed. “You’re joking, right?”   
  
“No!” Jongsuk protested, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on one elbow. He looked down at Sanghyuk, brushing some hair from Sanghyuk’s eyes. “I’m not joking. I really think you’re perfect.”  
  
“Oh,” said Sanghyuk. He really didn’t know what to say to that, and besides, the serious way that Jongsuk was looking down at him was making him feel somewhat unnerved. It always made him feel slightly uncomfortable to be watched like that, like there was something in Jongsuk’s eyes that was trying to see right through him.   
  
“I just mean— we work well together, don’t we? I know it hasn’t been that long yet but I know that I’ve never been in a relationship that seems to work as well as what we have.”  
  
“Me neither,” Sanghyuk admitted. It was actually true. Nobody he had been with before had treated him as well as Jongsuk did, he was sweet and genuine. It was a jarring contrast to Jaehwan’s constant deceit and animosity.  
  
“I was worried, to begin with, because I mean— we’re not really from very similar backgrounds and our jobs are so different and there’s the age difference and—”  
  
“You don’t like Criminal Minds,” Sanghyuk supplied helpfully.   
  
“Right,” Jongsuk said with a smile. “I don’t like Criminal Minds and that’s clearly a travesty.”   
  
“It is,” Sanghyuk said. “I just don’t understand it. How can you not like it?”   
  
“Are we really having this argument again?”   
  
“It’s not really an argument, it’s more that your opinion is wrong and I need you to know that.”   
  
Jongsuk gave a soft chuckle and dropped down to press his face into Sanghyuk’s neck. “I’m just— I’m trying to say that I like what we have. It’s nice, and comfortable, and I can see it lasting and that’s just— really nice to think about.”   
  
Sanghyuk was glad that Jongsuk wasn’t actually looking at him because he didn’t think he could have hidden the sudden spasm on his face. “Lasting?”   
  
“Yeah,” Jongsuk mumbled. He was blushing; Sanghyuk could feel the heat against his skin. “Lasting. Like, maybe one day we could live together. You know? I can see that happening.”   
  
Sanghyuk’s arms tightened around Jongsuk, holding him closer, trying to discourage him from lifting his head and actually looking at Sanghyuk. For his part, he seemed perfectly happy to continue hiding his face in Sanghyuk’s neck. “You can?” Sanghyuk asked, and his voice only sounded mildly choked.  
  
“Yeah. I think about it sometimes. That sounds a bit creepy, but it’s not creepy. Just like— a nice apartment somewhere. Sometimes with a dog, sometimes with a cat.” He did lift his head there, still a bit red, and smiled at Sanghyuk. Sanghyuk managed to smile back, and if Jongsuk thought he looked weird, he didn’t comment on it. “Of course, in this daydreams, you don’t have a job which requires you to be outside so much after dark.”   
  
“Urk,” said Sanghyuk.   
  
“I know it’s weird—”   
  
“It’s not weird,” Sanghyuk said. “I think most people would— think about this kind of stuff. I just— hadn’t really.”   
  
“I’m not saying we have to do it now,” Jongsuk said. “In fact, we don’t have to do it for years and years if you don’t want to. But it would be nice, I think.”  
  
Sanghyuk made a noise in the back of his throat, neither committing nor disagreeing, and pulled Jongsuk down into a kiss.  
  
A couple of hours later, he was walking slowly down the streets which lead to his apartment building. He was mostly just idling, which wasn’t smart, not even for a hunter. He was thinking, but he was hardly lost in thought, and he had his tattoos and the knife which he had hidden in an inside pocket in his jacket, the one which Jongsuk never seemed to notice.   
  
The fact was that he didn’t want to go home, to his bed which was empty and cold. But then neither had he been able to stand to stay in Jongsuk’s apartment. No, after that particular conversation, he hadn’t wanted to stay there for a moment longer than necessary in case Jongsuk brought the idea of moving in together up again. He had gotten the sex he had gone there to get, and then bailed.  
  
Now, though, he had no other option than to go home. That, or to go hunting, but that felt like a strange way to deal with something that wasn’t actually supposed to be traumatising.   
  
He kicked at a stone lying on the ground and it scuttled away, clanging against a lamp post. He had just stepped into the light of said lamp post when he felt his wards begin to warm, tittering a little at him. It was almost nice, considering that the cold was actually starting to set in now — no matter how much Jongsuk protested, it really hadn’t been cold before.   
  
The burn got warmer, the tittering louder. The oak tree tattoo stayed strangely still. Sanghyuk tried very hard to not be disappointed. He couldn’t really go out hunting, because that would have been weird, but it would have been great if the vampire had come right to him.   
  
Sighing, he turned to the direction that the presence seemed to be coming from, an alleyway a few feet behind him. “Jaehwan?” he said, annoyance winning out in his voice. “I told you I’m fed up with—”   
  
“I’m a little offended,” Wonshik said, as he materialised out of the entrance to the alley.   
  
“I’m very offended,” Hongbin said, following close after him. He gave Sanghyuk a wide grin, which didn’t help Sanghyuk’s mild embarrassment.   
  
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just— if there’s a vampire following me around, I’m going to assume it’s Jaehwan. Law of probability and all that.”  
  
“Understandable,” Wonshik said. “He’s still doing that, isn’t he? Following you around?”  
  
“Actually,” Sanghyuk said, with a frown, “he hasn’t been. Or at least, I haven’t noticed it. And normally, I would notice something like that. I think he’s actually been keeping his distance, like I asked him to.”  
  
If Wonshik and Hongbin thought that he would miss the looks that they shot at each other, they were highly mistaken. Hongbin spoke too quickly for Sanghyuk to ask about it, though. “That’s good,” he said. “We thought that he would be.”   
  
Sanghyuk shrugged. He thought it was weird, too, that Jaehwan was actually, for once, respecting Sanghyuk’s wishes and not stalking him. God knows he had never bothered with it before.   
  
“Why were you out?” he asked. “Don’t tell me that you two are the ones stalking me now?”  
  
Wonshik laughed, and Hongbin shook his head. “We were just out in the area.”   
  
“He’s photographing some buildings nearby,” Wonshik said. “He’s still in his architecture phase.”   
  
“I do not go through phases.”   
  
“Yes you do,” Wonshik said. He was leaning against the wall of a nearby building, laziness rife in his posture and tone. This was obviously a well worn argument. “Last time it was flowers, the time before that you kept just taking photos of me— with the flash on, I might add.”  
  
“That was like, one time,” Hongbin muttered. “I apologised, didn’t I?”  
  
“He blinded me for an hour,” Wonshik told Sanghyuk. “Funnily enough, his penchant for photographing me withered after that.”   
  
“You don’t have to tell me what happens in your bedroom,” Sanghyuk said.   
  
“Not— not like that!” Wonshik protested, as Hongbin cracked up. “He was just into taking photos of people for a while. He took a few of Jaehwan, too, but only when he wasn’t looking. They were pretty hilarious.”   
  
“Don’t tell him,” Hongbin said.   
  
“Oh, I won’t,” Sanghyuk said. “You have to promise to show them to me, though. You still haven’t let me see any of your photographs.”   
  
“I will,” Hongbin promised.  
  
“So why are you out so late, kiddo?” Wonshik asked. “Hunting?”   
  
Sanghyuk shook his head. “No, I wasn’t at work tonight. I was— I was out with Jongsuk tonight.”  
  
“Hakyeon told us about your new boyfriend,” Hongbin said. “He seemed very taken with him considering he’s never met the guy.”   
  
“Well, you know Hakyeon,” Sanghyuk said. “The guy owns a car and isn’t Jaehwan. He’s perfect!”  
  
“I’m sure there’s more to it than that,” Hongbin murmured. “Did your date just finish?”  
  
Sanghyuk nodded. Wonshik raised an eyebrow. “At this late an hour?”   
  
“You sound like my mom,” Sanghyuk said, and laughed as Wonshik spluttered. “No, I went back to his place, after we got dinner. We were— I mean, I was supposed to stay the night, but obviously I didn’t.”   
  
“Well, you stayed half the night,” Hongbin pointed out. “What’s wrong, did you have an argument?”   
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, aware of how weird it all sounded. “The opposite, in fact. He told me that he would like to move in with me someday.”   
  
It was gratifying to see how surprised Hongbin looked by that. “You haven’t been dating that long, have you? That seems a bit fast.”   
  
“He wasn’t suggesting that we go out and start looking at apartment listings right away or anything. He was just talking about it like it was going to be a possibility in the future.”  
  
“And you don’t want to do that?”   
  
“I hadn’t even thought about it once, it never even crossed my mind that _he_ would want that.”   
  
Wonshik was looking at him closely, and it felt weird, it felt like he was looking right through Sanghyuk too, but in a very different way to how Jongsuk did it. “It’s really rattled you, hasn’t it,” Wonshik said eventually, in a soft voice.   
  
“I guess so,” Sanghyuk admitted. “I didn’t know what to say to him.”   
  
“If he wasn’t expecting you to do it today, then maybe it would be best to just leave it,” Hongbin suggested. “You can think on it, if you want, but it’s still so early. Maybe you’ll change your mind at some point.”   
  
Wonshik was looking at Hongbin with the kind of soft expression that he reserved for only him. Back when they had been bickering, Sanghyuk had almost felt invisible, like it didn’t matter whether he was there or not because they were so wrapped up in each other. It was something that happened around Wonshik and Hongbin a lot, at once an excluding atmosphere and an inclusive one, like you were part of their world but you stood on the fringes, so as to not disturb them.   
  
He didn’t mind it, not really, he was used to it by now, but sometimes watching that was painful. They were so in love, and he knew that it hadn’t come easy for either of them, but it was merely a part of them now, like it coated their skin. Sanghyuk felt like he was digging and digging inside himself and was unable to find even a glimmer of anything like it.   
  
He sighed. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t think so hard about it.”  
  
“Probably,” Hongbin agreed. “You should probably sleep, too, because you smell exhausted, and that makes you a really easy target for vampires who are not us.”   
  
“Well, thank god I have vampires like you around,” Sanghyuk said with a smile. “Do you want to walk home with me?”   
  
“It would be our pleasure, kid,” said Wonshik, and Sanghyuk grinned at him.  
  
——  
  
Wonshik flopped down onto the couch, the awful maroon one that he really wanted to burn most days. Even his vampire eyes knew that it was an eyesore. “That was weird,” he said, his head flopped back on the arm of the couch looking at Hongbin.   
  
Hongbin made a noise in the back of his throat, half agreeing. He wandered into the kitchen and came back with a blood bag, sipping at it through a straw. “It was,” he said.  
  
“If Jaehwan’s not following Sanghyuk around, then where does he disappear off to every night?”   
  
Hongbin made another noise, unsure this time. He sat right down on Wonshik’s legs, laughing lightly when Wonshik grumbled and pulled them out from underneath. “He must be doing something. Maybe Sanghyuk just isn’t sensing him.”  
  
“Maybe,” Wonshik mumbled. “God, this is so fucked up. I don’t know what to do about it.”   
  
Hongbin was silent for a few minutes, apparently thinking. “Maybe,” he murmured, “we should finally just— bite the bullet and tell Sanghyuk Jaehwan is in love with him.”  
  
Wonshik blinked. While that might set things in motion, it would also fuck them up. “I’m— not sure that’s a good idea. Especially since we live with Jaehwan. If we interfered— he’d probably just get more insufferable. He might even kick us out.”  
  
Hongbin settled back against the sofa, frowning. “Yeah, maybe,” he muttered.  
  
Wonshik narrowed his eyes at him. “Do you want to go live with Hakyeon and Taekwoon? Because I do not.”  
  
Hongbin snorted. “Not particularly.”  
  
“Then you need to come up with a different solution.”  
  
“Why me?” Hongbin said, picking up a pillow and throwing it at Wonshik’s head. “Why am I coming up with solutions?”   
  
“Because you’re the smart one,” Wonshik said into the pillow now laying on his face.  
  
They heard the front door open and a second later Jaehwan stepped into the room. He looked drawn, like he had done for the past couple of weeks now; it was a strange look on a vampire, sat oddly against his slightly off skin. His shirt was flecked with blood, his hands coated with it. The kill couldn’t have been too new because he, thankfully, wasn’t dripping on the floor; he would never have forgiven himself for that, Wonshik knew.  
  
There was, strangely, no blood on his face, nothing around his mouth which would have pointed to him having fed. He clutched a knife loosely in his right hand, blade angled towards the floor, and that _was_ bloody. Jaehwan seemed surprised to see them, but made no move to hide the dagger in his hand.  
  
“What are you two doing here?” he asked. He was looking at them like he wasn’t even really seeing them.  
  
“Um,” Wonshik said, as Hongbin rose slowly to his feet. “We live here?”   
  
Jaehwan’s attention seemed to snap back to the present with an alarming intensity. “Yes, I know that, I’m not stupid,” he snapped. “What I meant was, I thought you two were going to take photographs together.”   
  
“We did,” Hongbin said. He motioned to the camera on the coffee table and Jaehwan’s eyes flicked to it and then back without seeming to take it in. “Then we ran into Sanghyuk and then we came home.”   
  
Jaehwan’s eyes narrowed. “And is Sanghyuk well?” he asked, in a tone so refined it was almost sarcastic.   
  
“He— yeah, he seems to be.” Hongbin gave Wonshik a look that was utter confusion. Wonshik felt the same.  
  
“That is— good, I suppose,” Jaehwan said.   
  
Wonshik cleared his throat. “Uh, what were you doing with that knife?”   
  
Jaehwan lifted the knife in his hand and looked at it closely. “I was hunting,” he said.   
  
“Hunting?” Wonshik asked blankly.  
  
“Yes.” Jaehwan grinned, all teeth and no amusement. “It is Sanghyuk’s dagger. He left it behind one night. It has a nice weight to it. It sits nicely in the hand.”   
  
“What were you hunting?”  
  
“It is none of your business,” Jaehwan said. “Contrary to popular belief, I do not have to account for my whereabouts at every point.”   
  
“So you weren’t following Sanghyuk around?” Hongbin asked bluntly.  
  
Something flashed across Jaehwan’s face, something that Wonshik didn’t like while he was still holding that knife up in the air. “Sanghyuk requested that I stay away from him, Crazy.”  
  
“That hasn’t really stopped you before,” Wonshik pointed out.  
  
“Like I said, I do not have to account for my whereabouts. You live in my home, that’s all. You are not my minders.”   
  
“We’re not trying to be your minders,” Hongbin said. “We’re just— you keep disappearing and we don’t know where you’re going.”   
  
“You could get one of those human trackers,” Jaehwan said bluntly. “Attach it to my clothing and belongings so that you could know where I am always. Then you’ll know that I’m not following Sanghyuk around. He’s not in any danger from _me_.”  
  
“You don’t need to get so defensive—” Hongbin started, before Jaehwan interrupted him.  
  
“And you need to learn to keep your nose out of other people’s business,” he hissed. “It is of no matter to you or Wonshik what I do with my time. I will not stand for being interrogated in my own house like this. You two need to learn to keep your mouths shut, or soon you will find yourself with no place in which to live.”   
  
He swept out of the room, still holding the bloody knife in his hand. After he was gone, there was a long stretch of silence which hung over them oppressively. “Do you think he really would throw us out just for being nosy?”   
  
“I’m not sure,” Hongbin said. “I don’t think so, but then he is— he doesn’t seem like he’s all there right now, if I’m honest, Wonshik. Sanghyuk’s current boyfriend has lasted far longer than any of the others, and Jaehwan was on the out with him for a while before that. Once I would have said there was no way he would throw us out, not over something so small, but now— I really don’t know.”   
  
Wonshik groaned and flopped back down on the couch, face first this time. “I’m going to ask Hakyeon about moving in with him,” he said. Hongbin laughed softly and perched himself on his back.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk was spacing out at work watching Sungjae gnaw on a pencil because even that was more interesting than writing his report on yet another uneventful hunting trip he’d been on earlier tonight, when sudden noise by the doorway drew his attention, a surge of voices and footsteps.   
  
“Huh?” Sungjae let the pencil fall out of his mouth with a clatter on the desk. “What’s going on?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Sanghyuk said with a frown, spinning in his chair to look at the entry to the room, where a small crowd of people seemed to have gathered, all of them talking rapidly and clearly over the top of each other. Sanghyuk stood up, trying to see over their heads to outside the room at whatever they were in such a tizzy over, but it was impossible at this distance.   
  
Someone pushed their way through the crowd and Sanghyuk saw that it was Hyunsik, head down as he forced his way into the office. He straightened and headed straight for them, a grim expression on his face. He and Ilhoon had been out too, tonight, on a fishing trip, and now, at the sight of Hyunsik by himself, Sanghyuk’s blood ran cold.   
  
Hyunsik must have seen the look on his face — and when he glanced at Sungjae, he wasn’t looking much better — and his expression softened. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not Ilhoon. He’s just washing his make up off his face.”  
  
The flood of relief that ran through Sanghyuk made him sink back into his chair. “Thank god,” he heard Sungjae mutter.  
  
“Do you know what’s going on out there?” Sanghyuk asked, waving towards the door.   
  
“Yeah, uh.” Hyunsik sat down at his desk, yanked a notepad to him, and started scribbling some stuff down. “We found another one of those dead vamps.”   
  
Sanghyuk straightened, spine stiff. “Wait, really? Where?”   
  
“Down an alley,” Hyunsik said. “We were doing the usual routine, you know how it goes, but there hadn’t been any bites. And then Ilhoon stumbled down the wrong alley and we realised why we were having such a quiet time of it. It was just slumped down there with it’s heart cut out. There was a young girl there too, but she was cold, like it had happened a couple of hours ago.”  
  
“Is Ilhoon okay?” Sanghyuk asked, concerned.   
  
Hyunsik ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess so. He was pretty shaken up. It’s— we see death a lot but this feels different, you know? Having bigger and stronger and— and worse than a vamp out there just feels dangerous. How are you supposed to hunt when you don’t know what else is out there stalking your prey?”   
  
“Have you guys reported it yet?” Sungjae asked.  
  
“Yeah, hence the—” Hyunsik motioned to the crowd. “They don’t know _who_ reported it, just that it’s happened. We told Kangin when we came in, he’s telling the Dragon. He’s going to want a report so I’m writing everything down as I still remember them.” His hands hadn’t stopped moving the entire time he was speaking.   
  
“Ilhoon probably needs coffee and some sleep, not interrogation,” Sungjae said softly, “but I bet he won’t sit it out.”   
  
Hyunsik grinned, though it was tired and strained. “Nah, he’s already told me that he’ll kill me if I try to make him. Besides, he’s the one who actually found it. He should be allowed to tell that part of the story.” He stood up abruptly, picking up his notepad. “I’m going to go check on him.”   
  
Sanghyuk and Sungjae watched him go, and when Sanghyuk turned back around, Sungjae was white-pale, chewing on his bottom lip hard enough that it looked like it might start bleeding. “Sanghyuk,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Who do you think is doing this?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Sanghyuk said softly. He didn’t say that he was starting to wonder if it was more a case of _what_ was doing this.   
  
——  
  
Hakyeon was pulling on a pair of boots when Taekwoon, flopped out on the bed beside him, went still. Hakyeon still didn’t know how he could tell the difference between normal still and _there’s something wrong_ still, considering there was, really, no difference, but he could tell, and it was the latter.   
  
“What’s wrong?” he asked, seconds before he felt a disturbance on the wards. “Who’s that?”   
  
“Wonshik and Hongbin,” Taekwoon said quietly.   
  
“Then why are you scared?”  
  
“I’m not scared,” Taekwoon said. “I am confused. It is very early for them to have headed over.” His voice dropped. “I am afraid that something is wrong.”   
  
Hakyeon stood, his hand groping automatically for a weapon before he remembered that he didn’t have one, that he didn’t need to carry one. He almost wished that he did have one, just for the security. There were still times where he felt naked and vulnerable without anything to hold to fight with.   
  
Despite Taekwoon’s words, the knock on their front door wasn’t any more frantic or scared than it normally was. Hakyeon flitted to the door to let them in and when he opened it, neither of the two outside seemed like they were in any rush to come in.   
  
“Can we come in?” Wonshik asked, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his posture casual. His hair was smushed under a baseball cap pulled down over his face.   
  
“Yeah, of course,” Hakyeon said, stepping aside. “What is it, what’s wrong?”   
  
Hongbin, just stepping into the apartment, blinked at him in confused. “Nothing’s wrong, why do you think something’s wrong?”   
  
Hakyeon motioned to Taekwoon sitting on the bed. “He said that something was wrong.”   
  
“I said that I _feared_ something was wrong,” Taekwoon corrected quietly. Hakyeon dismissed the distinction with a jerk of his head.   
  
Hongbin’s face softened into a smile. He sat down next to Wonshik on the couch, who, now he had lifted his head, looked just as bemused at the thought of being thought scared. “Really, there is nothing wrong. It’s just that there’s something we want to discuss with you, and we weren’t sure if you were going out hunting tonight. Locating you would have been difficult.”   
  
Hakyeon knew this was true, because Taekwoon made sure of it. He didn’t like being followed and he didn’t like feeling like he was being watched. Wonshik and Hongbin had located them outside of their apartment just a handful of times, and it had always seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth.   
  
Hakyeon sat on an armchair, chewing on his bottom lip. He didn’t feel any less worried. Taekwoon rose to his feet and moved into the kitchen and brought him a blood bag, which he handed to Hakyeon without a word. Hakyeon sipped at it obediently before he said, “What do you want to talk about?”  
  
Wonshik sighed and hid behind his hat again. Hongbin cleared his throat. “We— we think that we need to tell Sanghyuk about Jaehwan.”   
  
Silence greeted those words. Hakyeon didn’t know what to say for a good few seconds, trying to figure out how to react to something like that. “You mean, tell Sanghyuk about Jaehwan being in love with him?”   
  
Hongbin nodded. Wonshik still hadn’t looked up. He always was a bit of a coward when it came to confronting Hakyeon with things he knew Hakyeon wouldn’t like. Hongbin, meanwhile, ploughed on ahead. “We’re starting to get worried about him. He’s been going out a lot, and we thought he was following Sanghyuk, which is bad enough, but he says he hasn’t been, and Sanghyuk said that he hasn’t sensed him, and we don’t know _what_ he’s doing, but a week ago he came home covered in blood, and there’s been a couple of others times afterwards the same.”   
  
“Well, surely he’s just been feeding?” Hakyeon pointed out. “Now that he and Sanghyuk are no longer doing anything together, he doesn’t have Sanghyuk to be able to feed on.”   
  
“That’s what we thought, but the blood wasn’t on his mouth. It was on his hands and clothes but he didn’t seem to have been feeding. He had a knife too. And— Hakyeon, it wasn’t human blood. It was _vampire_ blood.”   
  
“Vampire blood?” Hakyeon glanced at Taekwoon, who looked stoic and stony, so much so that even Hakyeon was having trouble figuring out what he was thinking, but he was as surprised as Hakyeon was. “Why would he be covered in vampire blood?”   
  
Wonshik lifted his head. His face looked drawn, worried, and it made Hakyeon nervous. If his heart had still been beating, it would have been pounding hard now at that look. “Hakyeon, don’t you see? He’s _hunting_.”   
  
“Jaehwan is a vampire,” Taekwoon said immediately. “He is not a hunter.”   
  
“That’s still what he’s doing,” Wonshik said. “He knows about Sanghyuk going solo as a hunter, he made me tell him about it. He said that he was going to do whatever he needed to do to make sure that Sanghyuk was safe. We thought he was all talk but— he’s hunting these vampires before Sanghyuk even has a chance to get close to any of them.”   
  
Hakyeon was struck by that. “That’s— that’s crazy.”   
  
“It is,” Hongbin agreed. “But Jaehwan— he accused us of not doing enough. He knows there’s no way to stop Sanghyuk from doing what he wants, but maybe this is all he thinks he can do.”   
  
“He’s actually cracking up,” Wonshik said.   
  
“I do not—” Taekwoon said, almost impulsively, which was obviously such a shock for his system that he felt silent immediately afterwards.  
  
“What?” Hakyeon asked quietly.  
  
“I do not think it is all that crazy,” Taekwoon said. “If I had thought that doing something so drastic was the only way that I could keep you safe, then maybe I would have ended up doing the same.”   
  
“You wouldn’t have—”  
  
“I had the luxury of knowing my feelings were returned,” Taekwoon said. “I knew that you would not do anything that would have put your life in harm’s way. Jaehwan doesn’t have that. Sanghyuk seems to be doing anything he can do to risk his life. I know Jaehwan enough to know that the lack of control he has in this situation will simply be manifesting itself in other ways.”   
  
“But to go so far as to hunt other vampires?” Hakyeon asked, skeptical. “That seems a bit extreme.”   
  
“It is,” Taekwoon agreed. “But Jaehwan has always done things for the maximum impact.”   
  
“We’re worried,” Wonshik said bluntly. “I know that we don’t really owe Jaehwan much, apart from a place to live, but neither of us want to see him going on like this. I feel bad for him, and I can’t even tell him that, because that’s the whole _problem_.”   
  
“We both thought that if— maybe if we told Sanghyuk what was going on, and why it’s going on, that he’d be able to do something about it.”   
  
Hakyeon was quiet for a couple of minutes, thinking hard. Taekwoon took the now empty blood bag and took it back to the kitchen to be disposed of. “I think— I don’t think that telling Sanghyuk is a good idea.”  
  
Hongbin slumped back into the couch, head lolling onto Wonshik’s shoulder. “Why?”   
  
“He has his boyfriend,” Hakyeon said. “He’s— I think he’s moving on. He seems happy, and he’s happy without Jaehwan. I know that must be hurting Jaehwan, but it’s a monster of his own creation.”   
  
“That’s doesn’t mean he deserves this pain.”   
  
“It doesn’t,” Hakyeon said. He managed to inject some sincerity into his voice somehow; he rather thought that Jaehwan did deserve this pain. He was the one who had insisted that the relationship that he and Sanghyuk shared didn’t involve feelings, the one who couldn’t handle the feelings that had sprung up in him. “But does that mean that Sanghyuk is responsible for that pain?”   
  
Hongbin winced. Wonshik sighed and said, “No, it doesn’t.”   
  
“If Sanghyuk knew, if we told him, then he would feel responsible and try to do something about it. All of this is Jaehwan’s own problem. If he had simply been open about his emotions and feelings from the very beginning, he wouldn’t be feeling like this. I don’t see why Sanghyuk should be burdened with it from us, if Jaehwan isn’t willing to do the same.”   
  
“Jaehwan will not take kindly to you getting in his business,” Taekwoon said.   
  
“And no offense,” Hakyeon said, “but if he throws you out, then you two cannot come and live with us. There’s not enough room.”   
  
Wonshik managed to crack a grin. “I said that you’d say that.”   
  
“Well, it’s true,” Hakyeon said. “Look, I know that you two are worried for him. I know how you feel. But telling Sanghyuk is just going to cause more trouble than it’s worth. Jaehwan won’t like it, but neither will Sanghyuk. You know what he’s like.”  
  
“He just gets mad if we try to interfere in his relationship with Jaehwan,” Wonshik said with a sigh. “Even if we’re trying to help the two of them.”   
  
“I just think something needs to be done,” Hongbin muttered. He was frowning slightly, looking down.  
  
“Perhaps,” Taekwoon murmured, “but telling Sanghyuk is not the answer.”  
  
Hongbin pressed his lips together, unhappy, and Wonshik groaned and flopped over so that his head was laying in Hongbin’s lap. “Living with Jaehwan is so _hard_ right now.”   
  
“You’re the one who made him your maker,” Hakyeon said bluntly, and Wonshik flipped him off  
  
——  
  
When they got home, the house wards encasing them, a constant comfort, Hongbin let out a sigh. Beside him, Wonshik murmured, “I’m going to go shower.”   
  
Hongbin didn’t ask why he was speaking softly; Jaehwan was home, and silencing charms or no, Jaehwan’s presence was oppressive, and it always felt like too much, to speak above a whisper. “Alright.”  
  
Wonshik flickered off, down the hall, and Hongbin waited, for several moments, before moving again.   
  
Something had to be done. And he was apparently the only one willing to do anything at all.  
  
Hongbin flit to to the kitchen, snagging a blood bag and straw, before making his way to Jaehwan’s bedroom. He knocked on Jaehwan’s door, the blood bag clutched in his hand as a peace offering. He knew that what he had to say wasn’t going to go over well, and he didn’t want it to seem like he had come to Jaehwan simply to lecture him — even if that was, basically, what he was doing.   
  
“Jaehwan?” he called softly through the door. “It’s just me. Can I come in?”   
  
There was a pause before Jaehwan answered sullenly. “Do what you wish.”   
  
Hongbin pushed the door open. Jaehwan was laying on his bed, pulling headphones from his ears. The replacement laptop for the one that he had broken lay beside him, half open, the screen filled with a scene from a television show that Hongbin didn’t recognise. Hongbin held up the blood bag. “I brought this for you,” he said.   
  
“I did not ask for it,” Jaehwan said.  
  
“No, you didn’t,” Hongbin agreed. He lay it on the foot of the bed. “I brought it anyway. You haven’t been out tonight, so I thought you could use it.”   
  
Jaehwan ignored it. “I’m busy,” he said. “Close the door on your way out.”   
  
Hongbin didn’t move. “Jaehwan,” he said softly. “Can we talk?”   
  
Jaehwan’s eyes narrowed at him. He motioned to the laptop. “I told you, I’m busy.”   
  
“I know,” Hongbin said. “I just— I think we need to talk.”   
  
Jaehwan shut the laptop and picked it up and shoved it onto his bedside table. A second later he was standing, pulling his clothes straight. “Where’s Wonshik?”  
  
“Showering,” Hongbin said. “I’ve come by myself. I didn’t want you to think that we were— I don’t know, I didn’t want you to think we were staging an intervention or something.” He didn’t need to mention that Wonshik didn’t actually want to get involved.  
  
“Is there something wrong?” Jaehwan asked. There was a touch of danger in his voice. “Something not satisfactory in your living arrangements. You both already got rid of everything of mine in your rooms.”   
  
“It’s not that,” Hongbin said. They hadn’t gotten rid of everything. Just most of the things that Hongbin had only ever seen in the windows of dusty antique stores that no one ever went into. But that was beside the point.  
  
“Then what is it?”   
  
“It’s about Sanghyuk.”   
  
Jaehwan went still. The animosity was now rolling off him, thick as tar. “What about Sanghyuk?”   
  
“I think that you need to make a decision about him,” Hongbin said. “I don’t think that you are going to be able to keep going on like this. You are going to just snap at this rate.”   
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jaehwan said. “I told you to stay out of my business, Crazy. You shouldn’t push this.”   
  
Hongbin knew that he couldn’t do anything but that. He couldn’t go to Sanghyuk, so his only choice was to go to Jaehwan. Even if it was dangerous. He steeled himself. “Jaehwan,” he said softly, “I know that you’re in love with Sanghyuk.”  
  
Jaehwan stared at him, eyes unreadable, and then he took a step towards him, human speed, which unnerved Hongbin for a second. He wasn’t used to Jaehwan moving at human speed if Sanghyuk wasn’t in the room. “What?” he whispered, and it sent chills down Hongbin’s spine. “Me? In love with Sanghyuk?” He took another step forward, and it took all of Hongbin’s willpower to not step back. “You could not be more wrong. I don’t feel anything for Sanghyuk. He is nothing but a source of pleasure for me. He is entertainment, just like you and Wonshik are.”   
  
Hongbin grit his teeth. He should have known that Jaehwan would force the matter out to the very last possible moment, and he’d had enough. “You need to end it, need to stop this, give him up, or tell him how you feel.”  
  
Jaehwan’s fangs had run out, Hongbin could see the tips flashing when he next spoke. “Or, what?” Jaehwan asked softly.  
  
Hongbin should back out, he sensed it. Jaehwan was coiled, ready to spring, but something had to _give_. “Or I’ll tell him for you,” he said bluntly.  
  
A moment later, Hongbin found himself slammed against the wall, so hard that he was surprised he wasn’t forced right through it. Jaehwan’s hand pressed tightly against his throat, and Hongbin hadn’t been vampire long enough to stop the spike of fear that sent through him. His hands flew up to clutch at Jaehwan’s arms, struggling, but Jaehwan was so much stronger than him that he could barely do anything.  
  
“I told you not to push me,” Jaehwan whispered, his face right up against Hongbin’s. “You should know better, Hongbin. There are rules that govern me, rules that say that I am not allowed to harm Wonshik, as I am his maker. Those same rules do not apply to you. I can hurt you, I _will_ hurt you, I will _kill you_ if you do not watch yourself.”   
  
Hongbin could not remember being scared of Jaehwan. Jaehwan was, for all his strength, for all his words, mostly harmless; he did not, Hongbin knew, enjoy causing physical pain and would avoid it if he could. But the look in his eyes right then was not rational, not entirely sane. Jaehwan would hurt him.  
  
“Let me go,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your misery.”   
  
For a moment he thought that he had maybe tipped the balance of the scales in the wrong direction. But then Jaehwan stepped back, turning away in apparent disgust. “Get out,” he said. “Do not speak of this to Wonshik. Just, don’t speak of this at all, and don’t you dare interfere with me and Sanghyuk.”  
  
Hongbin nodded; it was all he felt capable of doing.  
  
“Good boy. I’ll pretend like you never said anything. You should be grateful for that.” Jaehwan jerked his head towards the door. “Leave.”  
  
Hongbin didn’t answer. He left, and spent a few minutes walking up and down the many hallways of the house before he could go back to Wonshik without looking or feeling shaken up.   
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk flopped down onto his back, head bouncing a little on the pillow. His skin was sweat slick, his breathing laboured in a good way. Jongsuk lay down half on him, his head pillowed against Sanghyuk’s chest, landing a little heavily and making him grunt.   
  
Sanghyuk pressed his arm across his eyes, blocking out the slant of light that had made it through the curtains over Jongsuk’s window. He could feel Jongsuk’s breath against his skin, smoothing out to the kind of even breathing that he knew signalled imminent sleep. He often dozed off or fell asleep after sex. Sanghyuk had found it cute.   
  
Now he just felt like his muscles were vibrating with all the energy still left inside of him. Sex with Jongsuk didn’t leave his muscles aching, his body stretched tight and sated by the end. More and more often he was finding that as Jongsuk fell asleep, Sanghyuk lay awake for an hour or two afterwards, thinking hard in a way that he had never done after sex, before.   
  
The problem, he was coming to realise, was that sex with Jongsuk was just... boring. It was fine, in many ways, good in others, but boring in all the ways that counted. Sanghyuk was used to sex that left him exhausted and aching afterwards, being fucked hard enough that he couldn’t sink into his head, couldn’t think, waking up with bruises pressed into his hip bones.   
  
This was _fine_. It felt good, being with Jongsuk, and he enjoyed it. But it never left him feel him feeling like he’d been _fucked_.   
  
He groaned and turned his head so he could mush his face into the pillow. It was fine, he told himself. Boring was normal, and it wasn’t it normal that he’d been searching for? It was— was what he thought he needed, to balance out everything that _wasn’t_ normal in his life. Which was pretty much everything, except this relationship.  
  
Sanghyuk squeezed his eyes shut, like that would keep the doubts out, keep reality from seeping in and reminding him he wasn’t normal, and playing at it wasn’t going to save him.  
  
——  
  
Jaehwan’s footsteps landed silently on the floor of Sanghyuk’s bedroom. Sanghyuk wasn’t in, was at work, locked into HQ doing something which hadn’t drawn him back out. Jaehwan had been able to relax, just a little. Wonshik’s little escapade notwithstanding, Sanghyuk’s HQ was as safe as place as anywhere could be.   
  
Jaehwan hadn’t been planning on coming here. Truth be told, he hadn’t been planning on doing much of anything tonight, now that his usual schedule of making sure Sanghyuk was safe was done. But the allure of Sanghyuk’s empty apartment had been too strong to resist, and he had found himself drawn here, already stepping into the room before he was even sure what he was doing.   
  
It had been a long time since he’d last been here, longer than he would have liked. It smelled so overwhelmingly of Sanghyuk in here, the scent of him up close like this like sweet nectar to Jaehwan after so long keeping his distance. It was addictive.   
  
He probably should have stayed away.   
  
He padded around the room, letting his hands brush against Sanghyuk’s laptop, the things he had left out on his desk before work. There were other smells in the apartment too, now that he was no longer concentrating just on Sanghyuk’s scent. There was another human scent in the bedroom, a scent that he didn’t want to focus on, so he flitted out of that room and into the other rooms, exploring the limited space available to him.   
  
He could smell Hakyeon in here, along with Wonshik and Hongbin. He growled a little at that; he had known they would be visiting, but that didn’t mean he had to like the thought of his human in a small space like this, especially with Crazy. Taekwoon’s scent was fainter, which suggested he was over less often. Sanghyuk really had no concept of self-preservation.   
  
There were dishes in the sink that Sanghyuk hadn’t gotten around to washing, an empty mug left out on the counter. A blanket was slung over the side of the couch, although there didn’t seem to be any sign that anyone had been staying over outside of the bedroom. Perhaps Sanghyuk had fallen asleep on his couch watching TV. He did that sometimes. Jaehwan didn’t want to think about how he knew that.   
  
He made his way slowly back into the bedroom. He entertained himself for a few seconds with the thought of stealing one or two of Sanghyuk’s shirts, but Sanghyuk would know it was him immediately. Jaehwan didn’t know how he did it, but Sanghyuk always knew when it was him. So instead of that, he just poked around Sanghyuk’s drawers and wardrobe while he had the chance.   
  
Under a pile of clothes on the bottom of Sanghyuk’s wardrobe, Jaehwan found the books that he had given Sanghyuk as gifts. The clothes seemed artfully arranged rather than dropped carelessly, no doubt a precaution against anyone seeing them by accident. Jaehwan rather thought Sanghyuk should invest in a safe, if he was that concerned; getting arrested would be difficult for both of them.   
  
One of the books had a bookmark tucked into it about three quarters of the way through and Jaehwan touched it gently, trying to pretend like it wasn’t a reverent touch. Then he snatched his hand away and stumbled backwards, more clumsy than normal, until he flopped backwards onto Sanghyuk’s bed.   
  
He rolled over, pressing his face into Sanghyuk’s pillow, breathing him in, glad that he didn’t have need to actually breathe so that he could keep doing this for as long as he wanted. It was pathetic, he knew. It had been pathetic since the very beginning, but sometimes, surrounded by Sanghyuk’s scent like this, when he could pretend that he was holding Sanghyuk in his arms just like he had been able to do not so long ago, the patheticness of it didn’t seem to matter anymore.   
  
Being in love was like that, he suspected. He felt like Taekwoon wouldn’t consider it pathetic — or maybe he would, considering Taekwoon’s thoughts on Jaehwan himself — but then Taekwoon had gone through this and come out the other end.   
  
It pleased him, that Sanghyuk had kept the books. It pleased him even more to think that Sanghyuk was reading them. No matter what else he said, no matter who else he fucked, there was a part of Sanghyuk that was clinging on to the little bits that Jaehwan had given to him before he had snatched them back in an attempt to keep himself whole and safe.   
  
It had been useless, of course, he knew that now. But there’d been nothing else he could do.   
  
He rolled over onto his back, holding the pillow to his face. “I’m so pathetic,” he said, muffled against the pillow but still loud in the empty room.   
  
——  
  
Sungjae’s foot tapped against the side of his desk where his leg was crossed over the other and dangling. He was tapping out some sort of rhythm that didn’t seem to have any actual rhyme and Sanghyuk glared at him. When that failed to stop him, he reached out and shoved Sungjae’s foot away.   
  
“Stop taking your bad moods out on me,” Sungjae whined, but he moved his foot away and stopped his infernal tapping.   
  
“I’m not in a bad mood,” Sanghyuk said patiently. “You’re just really fucking annoying.”  
  
“He is,” Ilhoon agreed from behind them, before Sungjae could answer. He slid into his chair behind his desk, Hyunsik sitting on the edge, tossing an apple up into the air before he bit into it. Ilhoon shooed him away before he could get apple juice on his precious paperwork.   
  
“Says you,” Sungjae grumbled, but it was weak, so they ignored him.   
  
“The sorcerer just arrived,” Ilhoon said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the door he had just come through. “They were taking him to that work room they set up.”   
  
“Did you get a look at him?” Sanghyuk asked, interested despite himself. Someone had convinced Kris that the way to track down whatever was killing vampires for them was to bring a sorcerer to do a little hocus pocus — or at least that was how Ilhoon had, rather scathingly, put it. Sanghyuk wasn’t putting much faith into it either. No sorcerer worth their salt did work like this outside of their own workshop.   
  
“Short,” said Ilhoon dismissively.   
  
“Says you,” Sungjae piped up, which yeah, okay, Sanghyuk high fived him for that one, while Ilhoon looked on unimpressed and Hyunsik tried to hide his laughter.   
  
“If you’re quite finished,” Ilhoon sniffed, which just made Hyunsik laugh harder.   
  
“Was he dark haired?” Sanghyuk asked. He didn’t think that Kyungsoo would agree to do something like this — hell, he doubted anyone here would even think to go to Kyungsoo for something like this. Sanghyuk had met Kyungsoo through Hakyeon, and he didn’t think any of his fellow hunters even knew of Kyungsoo. But still.   
  
“Nah, light,” Ilhoon said. “Slight. He didn’t look like much.”  
  
“Sorcerers don’t have to look very intimidating,” Sanghyuk pointed out.  
  
“Mmmhmm,” Ilhoon said, which they all recognised as the sign that he was tired of a conversation.   
  
Sungjae groaned, stretching in his seat. “I want to go out,” he whined, his restlessness from earlier apparently caused by boredom. “I’m so bored and I finished my paperwork already.”   
  
“Why don’t you go train?” Sanghyuk asked. “You know you could always use the practice.” Sungjae glared at him and Sanghyuk grinned at him. As annoying as Sungjae could be, Sanghyuk was glad that they hadn’t moved his desk away when he had shifted partners so that he could still have the company of the others, even if he wasn’t working in the field with them.   
  
“Hey, if you want to, I’ll come with,” Hyunsik said, jumping to his feet from behind his own desk. “I definitely could use some practice with hand to hand stuff, and I’ve got nothing else to do.”   
  
Sungjae groaned again, clearly weighing up his options. Sanghyuk knew that going and training would win out in the end; Sungjae was not the type of person who could stay still for very long. “Okay,” he said eventually, pushing himself to his feet like this was a pretty big favour he was doing for Hyunsik. Hyunsik rolled his eyes.   
  
“And then there were two,” Ilhoon quipped after Sungjae and Hyunsik disappeared, and now it was Sanghyuk’s turn to roll his eyes.   
  
Sanghyuk’s phone buzzed on the table next to him, skittering along the surface. He picked up and glanced at the message that had come through, getting enough to see that it was Jongsuk asking if he wanted to come over tomorrow before he went to work to watch a movie or something. Sanghyuk knew how to read between the lines; maybe if he was lucky, there would be less movie and more banging.   
  
“Urgh,” he said, and tossed his phone aside.   
  
That drew Ilhoon’s attention and he looked carefully at Sanghyuk, at the phone he had just ignored, and then back to Sanghyuk. When he spoke his tone was casual. “Is that your boyfriend?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sanghyuk muttered, running a hand through his hair and leaning over his form in the hope that Ilhoon would drop it. He should have known better.   
  
“Trouble in paradise?”   
  
Sanghyuk gave him a half-hearted glare through slitted eyes. “No, that’s not it. It’s just—”  
  
“Just?” Ilhoon prompted when Sanghyuk broke off.   
  
Sanghyuk pressed his lips together and then sat up, squaring his shoulders. He could say it aloud. “What do you do,” he said slowly, “if your boyfriend is kind of— boring?”   
  
Ilhoon’s gaze focused in a remarkably terrifying way. “Well, then. It would really depend on how he’s boring.”   
  
Sanghyuk nibbled on his bottom lip, trying to get the right words. “In bed,” he said eventually, and Ilhoon looked equal parts horrified and distraught at the thought of someone being boring in bed. “Or not— it’s not that he’s boring, I think he’s good, you know? It’s just— for me, it’s boring. And it’s not just that, either. He’s so— so _normal_.”   
  
Ilhoon looked like he was trying to hold back laughter. “Normal?”   
  
“Yeah. Like, movie dates and going to the zoo and no above the waist touching before 9pm. Normal.”   
  
Ilhoon was smiling, but he seemed serious enough when he said, “I don’t know, Sanghyuk. If it were me, and the guy was— well, as you said, I’d break up with him. Life is way too short for boring sex and boring dates. Like, especially for us. _Way_ too short.”   
  
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Sanghyuk said grumpily. “It’s just— he’s nice, you know? Like, really sweet. He doesn’t know who I am, or what I do, and he likes me all the same. But I think he likes me too much.”  
  
Ilhoon hummed under his breath. “I think if he really likes you, and you’re just using him to feel normal every once in while — and Sanghyuk, believe me when I say this, I don’t blame you for wanting that one little bit, we could all do with more normal, even me, but — is it fair on him, if he likes you?”  
  
“No,” said Sanghyuk, resting his head on his folded arms. “It’s not, is it?”


	8. Chapter 8

Sanghyuk supposed that the best part of having relationships which, for the most part, had no strings attached, was that breaking it off was pretty easy. Nobody, so far, had really argued with him, or tried to convince him to change his mind. There had been no feelings there, so there had been nothing to cling to. There was something reassuring in that.   
  
He’d never tried to break up with someone when there were feelings involved, but then there was a first for everything.   
  
Jongsuk met him at the door of his apartment after he’d knocked. He seemed pleased to see Sanghyuk, for all the short notice he had been given. “Come in,” he said, holding the door open and kicking a couple of pairs of shoes out of the way in the entrance. “I was doing some weekend work, so this is a nice distraction. Do you want some tea?”   
  
Sanghyuk waited until he had toed his shoes off and hung his jacket up on one of the pegs on the wall before he shook his head no. He didn’t quite trust his mouth yet. He was far more nervous than he really thought he should have been.   
  
Jongsuk led him into the living room, where the coffee table was piled high with folders and files, scrap bits of paper scribbled over with drawings and math-type stuff. At least, that was what it looked like to Sanghyuk. Not for the first time, he felt quite strongly the difference in their education levels.   
  
Jongsuk gathered the papers up, shoving them under the coffee table and picking up the pieces which had managed to migrate to the couch. Sanghyuk sat down, right on the edge, supremely uncomfortable. Jongsuk didn’t seem to have noticed as he took a seat beside him.  
  
“I was surprised when you texted,” he said, cheerfully. “You’re not usually so spontaneous.”   
  
Sanghyuk tried for a smile and felt that he’d probably achieved a grimace. “I thought we needed to talk.”   
  
“Oh?” Jongsuk frowned, taking in Sanghyuk’s serious expression, the stiffness of his shoulders. “Has something happened? Is everything okay?”   
  
He reached out and touched Sanghyuk’s arm. His touch was soft, and Sanghyuk bit down on a shiver, drawing his arm away. Jongsuk’s frown deepened. Sanghyuk thought, _it’s better to do it fast, like you’re ripping off a bandaid, just do it—_  
  
“Sanghyuk?” Jongsuk prompted. “What is it?”   
  
Sanghyuk took a deep breath. It was slightly shuddering. “I think we should break up.”   
  
It was obvious that, out of everything he could have possibly been gearing up to say, that had been the last thing Jongsuk had expected. He pulled his hand back from Sanghyuk, the movement arrested in his surprise. “What?”   
  
“I think we should break up,” Sanghyuk repeated. It didn’t feel any easier to say a second time around, like he’d hoped it would be.  
  
Jongsuk stared at him. The primary emotion on his face seemed to be confusion, but there was a growing well of hurt that Sanghyuk felt sorry for causing. His hands came to fist in his lap. “I don’t understand. I— why would you want to break up?”   
  
“I—” This was the harder part. Sanghyuk had puzzled it out for hours the night before, trying to come up with the perfect words to say, before he had given it up as a lost cause. “Would you believe me if I said that it wasn’t you, it was me?”   
  
That had been cruel, in a way. He shouldn’t have joked about it. Jongsuk looked away from him, taking in a breath that looked as shuddering as Sanghyuk’s earlier one had been. “I don’t understand,” he repeated. “We— things have been going so well, I thought you—”   
  
“Things have been going well,” Sanghyuk said, because it was the truth.   
  
“Then _why_?”   
  
Sanghyuk couldn’t bear to be on the same seat as him anymore. He stood up, moving away, pacing a little to get his jitters under control. Jongsuk watched him, face pale and eyes wide. He looked shellshocked. Sanghyuk knew that it was kinder to do this, than to keep going, but fuck, he felt like a monster.   
  
“There are things, that you want,” he said, measuring his words carefully. “Things that I cannot give you.”  
  
“Things, what things?” Jongsuk still hadn’t stood up, but he seemed to becoming more animated, his voice tinged with something like irritation, caused by his confusion that seemed to be overriding everything else. “I don’t want anything from you, Sanghyuk.”  
  
“Yes, you do. You want a stable life, a relationship with more than I could ever bring to the table. You want someone who can give you an apartment and a dog and domestic bliss. And Jongsuk, I have no doubt that you deserve that, and more. But I can’t be the one you get it with.”   
  
“I don’t understand,” Jongsuk said helplessly, and Sanghyuk had to turn away from him a little, gather himself.   
  
“I’m not— I’m not who you think I am. I’ve lied to you, a lot. And you deserve the truth, Jongsuk, I owe that much.” When he turned back to face Jongsuk, he felt like he could force the words out. “I don’t work in a grocery store. I’m a hunter.”  
  
Jongsuk frowned. “A hunter? Of what?”   
  
“Vampires,” Sanghyuk said, and watched as Jongsuk’s eyes grew wide again, one of his hands fisting in the pillow beside him. He opened his mouth and Sanghyuk beat him to the punch. “Not the VCF. A different kind of hunter. We work underground. It’s illegal and dangerous and hell, I’m not even sure if I’m not getting you in trouble even telling you about this. But you see, now, why I can’t keep— why we can’t—”  
  
Jongsuk did rise to his feet now, holding out an arm, as if to take Sanghyuk’s hand. “That doesn’t matter to me, Sanghyuk, it doesn’t, we can—”  
  
Sanghyuk stepped out of reach and Jongsuk fell silent, looking at him in despair. “I know you well enough to know that you won’t want me to keep doing this. I already know that you think a job working at a grocery store is too dangerous for me. But I like being a hunter, Jongsuk. I like the thrill of it, the danger, I thrive on it. I’m _good_ at it. I don’t want to quit that, not for anyone.”  
  
Jongsuk sank back down onto the couch, sinking heavily into the pillows like he wanted to disappear into them. Sanghyuk knew the feeling. Jongsuk wet his lips, seemed to contemplate his next words seriously. “We can work around it,” he said eventually, looking up at Sanghyuk pleadingly. “We can.”   
  
“I’m going to be dead in ten years,” Sanghyuk said bluntly. “That’s if I’m lucky. I could be killed next week, or the week after. Do you want to set up home with me, only to spend every night wondering if I’m ever going to come home. Sometimes— sometimes we never find the ones that go missing. You’d never know what happened to me. Is that the life you want to lead?”  
  
Jongsuk was silent. He picked up one of the pillows and drew it to his chest, hugging it closely. Sanghyuk thought for a moment and then sat down next to him again. “I can’t settle down,” he said. “Not ever. And you deserve better than the half life I could give you, Jongsuk. You deserve someone who will love you. I— I’m not capable of that.”   
  
The silence after that stretched on for so long that Sanghyuk began to think he should just leave. Then Jongsuk sighed, the sound full of resignation. “There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind, is there?”   
  
“No.” Sanghyuk touched his knee briefly and then fisted his hand. “I am sorry, Jongsuk. I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”  
  
Jongsuk gave a weak smile, not looking at Sanghyuk but instead at the coffee table. He motioned at Sanghyuk. “Your tattoos, are they—?”  
  
“They’re warded. Each one could get me tossed in prison. The job and everything that goes with it could get me executed.”  
  
“So why are you telling me this now?”   
  
Sanghyuk gave a light shrug. “I trust you to not go to the police. I think you’re a good man, who wouldn’t do something like that.”   
  
Jongsuk nodded slowly. “You know, Sanghyuk, I know you well enough as well. And I think I knew you weren’t in love with me. But I thought, maybe, with time—” He sighed again. “But I suppose not.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sanghyuk said again.  
  
“I know.” Jongsuk stood, tossing the pillow aside. “I won’t kid myself into thinking you’ll change your mind, not knowing how stubborn you are. But Sanghyuk, if you ever— if you decide that you want what I’m offering you, I’ll be here for you. I think I’d wait a long time for you.” He gave Sanghyuk a smile that was at once bittersweet and utterly devoid of amusement. “I’m not sure you realise the hold you can have on men like me.”  
  
——  
  
Hakyeon responded to Sanghyuk’s text message immediately after the sunset. It was almost as though he had been waiting for it. Which, when he thought about it like that, Sanghyuk actually didn’t want to think about it at all.  
  
He was laying sprawled across his bed when the doorbell rang. He got up and shuffled his way to his front door, and opened it to find Hakyeon standing on his front step in all his vampire glory. “Come in,” he said, standing aside. It still felt so weird to just have vampires turn up on his doorstep and for it to not even _really_ feel strange. “Quick, before someone sees a vampire standing outside my door at two in the morning.”   
  
“You have that charm,” Hakyeon said, as he glided into the room. “Remember?”  
  
“Oh, yeah.” Sanghyuk shut the front door and, without a word, walked to his fridge, pulled out his bottle of vodka, grabbed two glasses, and motioned for Hakyeon to sit down.   
  
“You want some vodka?” he asked, waving the bottle vaguely in the air as he sat down too.   
  
“Vampires can’t drink alcohol,” Hakyeon said. “That bad, huh?”   
  
Sanghyuk opened the vodka and poured himself an amount that was roughly a shot’s worth, give or take, before he answered. “I broke up with Jongsuk.” He knocked the vodka back before Hakyeon could ask him any questions, like why or how or what was he thinking. The vodka burned all the way down, which was nice. If there was anyone who deserved an abused esophagus, it was Sanghyuk.   
  
In the end, Hakyeon didn’t ask any of those things. In fact, he didn’t say anything. He just sat silently, waiting for Sanghyuk to continue. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Sanghyuk asked.  
  
“No,” Hakyeon said simply.   
  
“I mean, I just did it tonight, you know? And I had been thinking about doing it so it’s not a surprise. But I liked him. So it feels weird. I feel bad.”   
  
Silently, Hakyeon poured another thumb of vodka into Sanghyuk’s glass. The feeling of deja-vu was now almost too much to bear.   
  
“I liked him,” Sanghyuk repeated. It was almost like a defense, somehow. Hakyeon still didn’t say anything. “I did. He was nice and treated me better than anyone else has for a long time.”   
  
“Sometimes, it’s not enough,” Hakyeon said quietly.  
  
“But why?” Sanghyuk asked. “Why wasn’t it enough this time? It had everything going for it, for once. Everything should have clicked into place, and yet— he wanted us to move in together, somewhere down the road, but the thought of it, when he said that, made me break out into a cold sweat, and I— I couldn’t even—”  
  
He broke off in favour of knocking back the small amount of vodka in the glass. He half-expected Hakyeon to make a disapproving noise, but then Hakyeon had been the one who had poured it for him.  
  
“Sometimes I think I’m broken,” Sanghyuk said, eventually, slumping down against his table. “I just— I’ve never been in love, you know that? I’ve dated, and I’ve slept with people, a lot, but I’ve never even come close to being in love.”  
  
“Oh, Sanghyuk,” Hakyeon said. “That doesn’t mean you’re broken. You’re young, you’re only twenty.”   
  
“But I was trying,” Sanghyuk protested. “I _want_ to fall in love. And I think people have been in love with me. Hell, I know Jongsuk was— is— in love with me. But I can’t do it myself.”  
  
There was a long stretch of silence. Hakyeon poured him another measure of alcohol and then sat, turning a tumbler over and over in his hands thoughtfully. Eventually, he said, “It was hard for me, too.”   
  
Sanghyuk blinked at him, a little blearily. “You mean, before Taekwoon?”   
  
Hakyeon laughed. “Yes, but that was hard in its own way. No, I was just— our jobs don’t really support outside dating. You can’t tell people about it, not when what we do is so highly illegal. It’s why so many hunters simply date other hunters. It’s easier.”   
  
“Hence Wonshik and Hongbin,” Sanghyuk murmured.   
  
“Right,” Hakyeon said. “Even that was more a matter of convenience than anything else. But for me, there weren’t any hunters at HQ who I was interested in dating, which meant I had to look outside of my work for it. I went on so many dates, Sanghyuk, you wouldn’t believe it. But no one I dated was right.”   
  
“Everyone is so _boring_ ,” Sanghyuk said.  
  
“They are. But it’s not a failing, Sanghyuk. They’re just normal people, living normal lives. But hunters, especially hunters like me and you, we live for the thrill of the hunt, for the adrenaline singing in our veins. Is it any wonder, really, when you look at it that way, that no one could ever seem to be good enough, could never be exciting enough.”   
  
“Is it any wonder that you fell in love with a vampire,” Sanghyuk mumbled. “Or that my first thing ever was with one.” He stared at the bottom of his empty glass. “You know, I could have fallen in love with Jaehwan, once. I think I almost did.”   
  
He glanced up and caught sight of the expression on Hakyeon’s face. “I know you don’t get it,” he said softly, “but there were times, in the early days, where he was— nice. I can’t say that he was kind, but spending time with him was fun, and I enjoyed it. He made me laugh, he could make me feel so good and like I was desired in ways that I couldn’t even imagine. But,” he added, with a sigh, “it didn’t last. And I knew better than to think it would have lasted. But still. It could have been different.”   
  
Hakyeon mumbled something, his face turned down. When he lifted it, there was something different about it, something set harder. “Do you think you could love Jaehwan, now?”   
  
The question, coming from Hakyeon, confused Sanghyuk a little. “Now?” he asked, his brain beginning to run a little slower, everything starting to feel a bit numb. He liked that, appreciated that, so he took the bottle of vodka from Hakyeon and drank straight from it this time. It seemed faster. “I don’t know, maybe? I mean, obviously he would have to stop being such a giant asshole all the time and all that _maroon_ , but—” He broke off, laughing when he saw the horrified expression on Hakyeon’s face. “I’m not going to actually do it, don’t worry. I just mean, hypothetically. If he changed things. If he was more like he used to be, but different again. That would have been the nicest thing, the best case scenario.” He shrugged, the motion making him sway a bit. “But that won’t happen, and he’s become so horrid of late— it’s just a fantasy. I can’t trust him anymore.”  
  
“Mmmm,” Hakyeon murmured. Sanghyuk took a couple more swigs from the bottle of vodka and then lay his head on the table, where it was cooler and where he could think better.   
  
After five minutes, he lifted his head back up and said, “Hakyeon, do you think that relationships only work when one person loves more than the other?”   
  
Hakyeon looked taken back by the question. “What do you mean?”   
  
“I just mean that, Wonshik loves Hongbin more than Hongbin loves him. Or at least, that’s how it used to be. We all knew that, even after Wonshik was turned. And you— do you think you love Taekwoon as much as he loves you?”   
  
Hakyeon, surprisingly, didn’t seem offended by the question. “I have no idea, Sanghyuk.”   
  
“I just— what if I could’ve made my thing with Jongsuk work? What if it doesn’t matter that I don’t love my partner as much as they love me? Maybe it could be enough.”  
  
“There are many different ways to love someone,” Hakyeon said. “If someone loved me enough that they would die without me, but I knew that I would be able to live, even though it would hurt, that doesn’t mean that my love isn’t as real or as strong. It’s just different.”   
  
“You loved Taekwoon enough to die for him,” Sanghyuk mumbled. “You turned for him.”   
  
“I turned for many reasons, but yes, I suppose that was one of them. But Sanghyuk— being less in love with someone in a relationship isn’t the same as _not_ being in love with someone at all.”  
  
“What if it just took more time?”   
  
“Do you think it would have come eventually?” Hakyeon asked. “With Jongsuk? Is that what you truly think.”   
  
Sanghyuk lay his head back on the table. “No,” he mumbled into the wood.   
  
“Sometimes two people just really don’t work,” Hakyeon said. “And sometimes two people can work but the situation can be wrong.”  
  
“It doesn’t get more wrong than vampire and human,” Sanghyuk said, “and somehow you and Taekwoon made it work.”   
  
“Yes,” Hakyeon said quietly. “But can you say that it came at no cost? I can’t. And you have no way of knowing if the cost will be worth it in the end.”   
  
“But it was worth it, for you.”   
  
“Of course it was worth it, for me,” Hakyeon said. “But that doesn’t mean it will, or that it has to be, worth it for you.”   
  
Sanghyuk pressed his lips together for a long few moments. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said. “Hakyeon, I just— I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I thought I’d found it but I hadn’t.”   
  
“Sanghyuk, you’re _twenty_. It’s going to come.”   
  
Sanghyuk swallowed, feeling tears prick at his eyes all of a sudden. “You’re wrong,” he whispered, slightly indistinct. “I am broken. You were right, about Jaehwan. I don’t know how exactly but— he broke me.” He swallowed again, trying to force down the lump in his throat. “No one can compete with him, but he’s so horrid, that I can’t be with him either. I’m just— I’m going to be alone forever.”  
  
Hakyeon’s face twisted, and he stood. A moment later the vodka bottle had disappeared from his hands, swept away by Hakyeon. Sanghyuk began to protest — it wasn’t even half finished yet — but Hakyeon ignored him, putting it back in the fridge where it could be safe. “Come on,” he said. “You need to sleep. It’s getting late— or early.”   
  
Sanghyuk nodded, blinking away the tears in his eyes, turning his thoughts away from Jaehwan. “Mmmm,” he mumbled. He stood up, a little shakily. “And you need to get home before the sun comes up.”   
  
“That’s right.” Hakyeon gave him a strained smile, coming over to slide his hand under Sanghyuk’s elbow, keeping him up. “Don’t worry, Sanghyuk, it’ll feel better in the morning. Although you probably won’t, since I bet this gives you the hangover from hell.”   
  
“I’d deserve it,” he muttered, before flopping face down onto his bed, not bothering to take his jeans or shirt off. He would sleep like this, it didn’t matter. The room was starting to spin worryingly and he didn’t trust his ability to undress right then.  
  
He must have fallen asleep because when he next opened his eyes, he was under the covers, and Hakyeon was setting a glass of water down on his bedside table. Sanghyuk shifted and realised that he wasn’t wearing his jeans anymore. “Did you strip me?” he asked, in a tiredly indignant voice.  
  
“Just your jeans,” Hakyeon murmured. “Just so you would be more comfortable.”   
  
“Are you going to tuck me in too?”  
  
“Only if you want me to.”   
  
“I almost do want you to,” Sanghyuk said, and Hakyeon laughed. A second later Sanghyuk felt the cool press of Hakyeon’s lips against his forehead, but it felt too nice to protest about.   
  
——  
  
Everything hurt. The pain seemed to go down to his nails, his teeth even aching with how dry his mouth was. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had a hangover like this and he was sure he’d drunk less last night than he had other nights. He must be getting old.   
  
It took longer than he liked to think about to convince himself to open his eyes and he regretted it the moment he did so. The sunlight seemed to blind him and made his head pound hard enough to make the nausea he already felt intensify to the point where he lurched up and staggered into the bathroom, where he lay his head against the cool porcelain of his toilet and heaved in lungfuls of air before his stomach settled.   
  
It took an even longer time before he picked himself up off his bathroom floor and shuffled into the kitchen, setting the kettle going in order to make the strongest cup of coffee he could possibly manage. He knew he should make himself some food, but the thought of that made his stomach threaten rebellion so he stopped thinking about it.   
  
As he was waiting for the water to heat up, he fished his phone from where it had fallen under the kitchen table, and called into work. No one picked up, and Sanghyuk mumbled into the receiver, “This is Sanghyuk. I broke up with my boyfriend last night and then proceeded to get really drunk, and now I am going to die. I won’t make it in tonight, because I will be dead from this hangover. Find someone to cover my shift, thanks.” That would do.  
  
He found the bottle of vodka tucked away into the corner when he tried to find a mug and raised an eyebrow at how it was much emptier than he remembered it being. That explained the hangover from hell, at the very least.   
  
He sat nursing his coffee, sipping at it with grimaces at the entire situation. He appreciated Hakyeon letting him drink himself into oblivion but he wasn’t sure the hangover was worth it, at this stage. All it was doing was adding to how crappy he felt all around.   
  
Thinking about Hakyeon made his mind catch on one of the few things he could remember from their conversation the night before, most of it lost to the fuzzy ravages of alcohol. He kept coming back to that question, that strange moment where Hakyeon had asked _could you fall in love with Jaehwan, now_. The question itself was relatively innocuous, considering they’d been talking about Sanghyuk’s emotions, his lack of love for Jongsuk, but— the _now_ tacked on at the end was strange.  
  
It had seemed an odd question for Hakyeon to ask even in the midst of being drunk, but now, in the cold light of the morning — well, early afternoon — it was downright bizarre. Hakyeon knew that he and Jaehwan hadn’t spoken in months, hadn’t seen each other in all that time. Nothing was happening now.   
  
Nothing on Sanghyuk’s end.  
  
He remembered all the talk, back when he and Jaehwan were still— a thing, together in whatever sense of the word. The talk, over and over, of Jaehwan’s emotional issues, how he was working through something that Sanghyuk could never get to the bottom of, so he had dismissed them.   
  
He thought back to Hakyeon seeming like he wanted to tell Sanghyuk something, all that time ago, and Taekwoon reminding him almost that it wasn’t his place to say anything, like it had been a conversation they’d had before. It wasn’t their right, he’d said, and Sanghyuk sat up, suddenly wondering if maybe, just _maybe_ , Jaehwan was—  
  
But that didn’t make sense, he thought, staring back down into his half-finished coffee cooling in his hands. If that were the case, then why did Jaehwan so often treat him with such apparent loathing, so much anger all the time? Was it really just a— a mask that Jaehwan was wearing, to protect himself? And if so, protect himself from what?   
  
He downed the rest of his coffee in one long gulp and stood up, decisively, ignoring the way his head spun. He would shower, and get dressed, and eat something that could fuel him through the conversation he planning in his mind.   
  
He had to go see Jaehwan. He needed to know if he’d figured this out, if he was finally at the bottom of this— this game that he and Jaehwan had been playing for far too long now.   
  
——  
  
It was probably just Sanghyuk’s imagination, but the air in Jaehwan’s house felt more frigid than normal. As he walked through the living room and into the hallway, goosebumps broke out on his arms and a shiver went down his spine, his fingers curiously numb. He hoped it was just because of the cold and not because he was so nervous about having an actual conversation with Jaehwan after so long. He knew this probably wasn’t going to go over well. Jaehwan was always prickly where his emotions were concerned— this wasn’t going to be any different. Especially not when Sanghyuk rather thought he’d be poking right on the sore spot.  
  
And last time, last time had been so awful, they’d both said this was over. And maybe it was, maybe Sanghyuk should let it lie, should have stayed away. But it just didn’t feel done with, Sanghyuk still felt like he was waiting for something. Maybe Jaehwan did too.  
  
He knocked lightly on Jaehwan’s bedroom door. It swung open to reveal Jaehwan leaning against the frame casually, one hand stuck in his pocket. He was wearing his customary slacks, navy blue, with a white button down tucked in. His feet were bare against the cold flooring.   
  
He gave Sanghyuk a smile. There was something awfully brittle about it, and the way he said, “Hello, love.”   
  
Sanghyuk didn’t know what the appropriate facial expression was in this situation. He certainly didn’t feel like smiling, though the fact that Jaehwan had come to greet him was somewhat uplifting. “Can I come in?”   
  
“I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to stop you,” Jaehwan said, whatever that meant, and he stepped back, sweeping his arm around to welcome Sanghyuk into his room. Sanghyuk stepped inside, ignoring the dramatic gesture. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Jaehwan to snap at him, like last time, suddenly and without warning. This surface politeness surely wouldn’t last.  
  
Jaehwan’s bedroom looked the same as it always did, untouched and unchanged. It was like stepping into a time capsule, throwing in Sanghyuk’s face how much everything had changed, how much _he_ had changed, since the last time he was here.  
  
“You seem nervous, love,” Jaehwan said, crossing his arms and cocking his hip. “I’m not sure I like such a serious expression.”   
  
Sanghyuk sat down on the edge of Jaehwan’s bed, smoothing the wrinkles that made in the sheets to try and cover his nervous trembling. “The last time I was here, you— some things were said.”   
  
Jaehwan’s smile was gone, his face masked into blankness. When he spoke, his tone was light, and it didn’t match, “Yes, well. We both said some things. I recall you told me you were finished with me. Have you changed your mind, is that why you’re here?”  
  
“Not exactly,” Sanghyuk murmured, not wanting to answer that one way or another. “I mostly just wanted to talk.”  
  
He could practically see the shutters coming down over Jaehwan’s face. Even the mere mention of talking was enough to shut him down, for him to shut Sanghyuk out. He sighed. He had known it wasn’t going to be easier, but he hadn’t wanted Jaehwan to be on the defensive quite so soon.   
  
“Talk?” Jaehwan asked. His tone was razor sharp; if Sanghyuk brushed up against it wrong, he would find himself sliced open. “About what?”   
  
“About us,” Sanghyuk said softly. “About you. About what’s been going on between us.”  
  
“I am not sure if you hadn’t noticed, love, but there has been nothing going on between us for quite some time. There’s nothing to talk about,” Jaehwan said flatly.   
  
“Just because you don’t want to—”  
  
“There is nothing to talk about,” Jaehwan repeated, more firmly, more dangerously.   
  
“Jaehwan, please,” Sanghyuk whispered. “I don’t understand what we’re doing anymore. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, I can’t read your thoughts.”  
  
“That’s not what we have,” Jaehwan sneered. “You don’t need to know about that, Sanghyuk, remember? No emotions.”  
  
“There are emotions,” Sanghyuk said, and something flickered across Jaehwan’s face, something that looked like fear. “You’re so angry at me, all the time, and I don’t know why. Like, last time, I don’t— what did I do, Jaehwan?”  
  
Jaehwan leaned against his amoir, the picture of affected casualness. “I rather thought we went over that well enough.”  
  
“I know, I sleep around, like a whore,” Sanghyuk said, soft, and Jaehwan looked away, seeming angry, like the mere mention of it infuriated him, “but— you never told me why, Jaehwan. Why it upsets you that I sleep with others. You always skirted around it when I asked. But now I’m asking again: why?”  
  
The question obviously threw Jaehwan. His mouth opened, and then snapped shut so fast it was audible. He didn’t seem to have an answer, and the silence stretched on as he struggled to come with something to say. Finally, he said, “I just— I simply don’t understand it. One of them will never be able to satiate you, the way I do. It’s insulting, that you wander elsewhere.”  
  
“So this is all about wounded pride?” Sanghyuk asked, eyes searching. “You’re that angry, angry enough to end things— over wounded pride?”  
  
Jaehwan didn’t say anything, his teeth grit shut. He looked— he looked like he was in a corner. “Yes,” he finally said. “It’s that, and also that— you’re my human, and I don’t like other people touching my things.”  
  
He said the second part tauntingly, like he wanted Sanghyuk to rise to the bait. Fighting was always how he weaseled out of these conversations before, after all.   
  
Instead of taking the bait, Sanghyuk shifted them slightly and said, “I broke up with Jongsuk.”  
  
Jaehwan jerked. “What?”  
  
“My boyfriend, I broke up with him.”  
  
“I— why should I care?” Jaehwan asked, quickly, like that would cover how his shoulders had sagged in relief. “Did you come all this way just to tell me that, are you here looking for some rebound dick? Because I told you, Sanghyuk, I will not play second fiddle—”  
  
“No, I’m here to talk, like I said,” he murmured, cutting Jaehwan’s tirade short and taking the wind out of his sails. “Because you know what I realized, Jaehwan? The last time— you were so angry, and it seemed so random to me, like it had come out of nowhere, but then I realized— I’d started dating Jongsuk. And you brought him up, brought up not wanting to be, as you just put it, second fiddle.” He stood, so he could look Jaehwan in the eyes more levelly. “Why don’t you want me to date, Jaehwan?”  
  
Jaehwan opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I have no idea what you want me to say, what you’re trying to imply. I’ve already told you, I simply don’t like—”  
  
“I think there’s more to it,” Sanghyuk said bluntly, “I think there’s more to this,” Sanghyuk said, motioning between the two of them, him standing calmly, Jaehwan leaning against his chest of drawers with his arms folded defensively against his chest. “I’ve asked so many times before, if maybe you could feel something more, if you could— if you _do_ — care about me more than how you claim you do. You’ve always denied it. But Jaehwan, I’m giving you a last chance here to just be honest with me. I’m not going to laugh at you, I’m not going to— whatever you’re afraid of, I won’t do it, I just need to know.”   
  
He was breathing heavily when he finished, his heart pounding in his chest. Jaehwan was staring at him, mouth open ever so slightly. He wet his lips before he said, “The only thing I feel for you is mild fondness. The kind you may feel for a small child.” His tone was not as cold as he probably would have liked it to be. He sounded harried, desperate.   
  
“Bullshit,” Sanghyuk cried. “Jaehwan—”  
  
“In fact,” Jaehwan continued, “even that could be considered pushing the truth. The fact is, Sanghyuk, you are merely a human. There are plenty of you. And if it was so easy to seduce you, then I would expect it would be easy to replace you. But you’ve already found that you cannot replace me. So I would suggest that you do not push me too hard.”   
  
Silence fell between them. Sanghyuk stared at Jaehwan, who avoided his eyes. He was lying, it was obvious, they both knew it was obvious, but what could Sanghyuk do? If Jaehwan wasn’t willing to be honest with him, if he was going to be constantly shoving Sanghyuk away when things became too close, then how could Sanghyuk keep doing this?  
  
He couldn’t, that had always been the truth of the matter. He knew that coming here tonight could have only had one of two outcomes. It wasn’t his fault that this was the outcome that Jaehwan had chosen.   
  
“Do you understand?” Jaehwan asked, almost sing-song, highly condescendingly.   
  
“Yes,” Sanghyuk said. He felt sad, but he could not change Jaehwan, who had remained stagnant for three hundred years and was apparently content to remain so for three hundred more. “I understand very clearly. And I can’t do this, Jaehwan, I can’t take the abuse. Because that’s what it is.”   
  
“Oh?” Jaehwan sneered. “So, what? Are you going to stay away now? Leave me alone?”   
  
“You can finally have your misery back,” Sanghyuk said. Jaehwan jerked like he’d been physically hit, his eyes going wide. “I wanted to give you one last chance, because I’d hoped— I’d hoped maybe, you wanted this to work out enough that you’d finally come clean.”  
  
“I— I have nothing to come clean about,” Jaehwan said, quickly, too quickly, “and let’s be perfectly honest here, Sanghyuk. You always come back. What happens when your next boytoy fails to satisfy you?  
  
“I didn’t come back since we broke it off last time, because I really intended to stay away. The only reason I came here was to see— but that doesn’t matter. The point is, I didn’t come here for sex. I can live without the sex, Jaehwan, I can,” Sanghyuk said. “Do you honestly believe that the way you fuck me is somehow enough to cover up how fucked up this relationship is? I hate the person that I’ve become thanks to you, Jaehwan. I don’t even recognise myself anymore. You’ve turned me into someone I’m not, someone bitter and angry, and— and broken.” His mouth twisted, and something flashed across Jaehwan’s face, something Sanghyuk couldn’t place. “You broke something in me. Hakyeon warned me and he was right. I don’t think you realise how _honest_ I am with you, always. All I’ve ever wanted was the same from you.”   
  
“You knew what you were getting into from the start,” Jaehwan said, and his voice was meant to be cutting, but it came out oddly meek.   
  
“I did,” Sanghyuk agreed. “I’m not sure you did, though.”  
  
He brushed past Jaehwan, who made an aborted motion like he was going to reach out and grab him. Sanghyuk was glad that he didn’t touch him, because he felt wound up enough that the heavy knife in his pocket was a reassurance rather than merely a fixture in his life. Rather than angry, he was _upset_ , but that still didn’t mean he wouldn’t relish the idea of trying to stake Jaehwan at that point in time.   
  
The way Jaehwan had reacted hadn’t been a surprise. It was disappointing, but no surprise. What was a surprise was that Sanghyuk didn’t shed a single tear over it.   
  
——  
  
Throwing himself into work had always served him well before, and it was serving him well now. Sanghyuk had taken a number of extra shifts at work, most of them simply desk work. He knew better, now that he was solo, than to take endless amounts of patrol shifts, but even endless paperwork was preferable to being at home.   
  
Tonight was a patrol shift, though, and he was grateful for it. Being in the office was starting to get oppressive, with people noticing that something was off and wanting to know what. Sungjae had been giving him mooning looks for the past few days and Ilhoon had been dropping hints that he was coming close to asking what was making him look like such a miserable asshole.   
  
Sanghyuk hadn’t wanted that, didn’t want to have to come up with some sort of cover story that sounded logical. He didn’t feel like adding more lies on top of all the ones that he had already been forced to tell thanks to Jaehwan. He didn’t want to have to talk about his not-boyfriend with Sungjae even just one more time.   
  
It was quiet tonight. The sky was clear, the moon bright and high. It was relatively mild, the slight breeze welcome as it ruffled Sanghyuk’s hair gently. There was no one else out, not a whisper of sound around him. All he could hear was his own footsteps, his own heartbeat. The peace was incredibly soothing.   
  
This area held a number of office buildings, the sort of places that shut up completely for the night and which rarely saw any kind of vampire activity. There was a mall, though, opened just a few months ago, which stayed open late, and there’d been uptick in disappearances in the area. Predictably, the mall wasn’t responding by shutting earlier; if there was money to be made, they were going to take it.   
  
He turned his face upwards, letting the breeze play over his face. It had been a couple of weeks now since he had last seen Jaehwan, and avoiding him was just as hard as it always had been; yet, in some ways, it felt easier than it ever had been. Knowing that he _couldn’t_ go back made it feel like a done deal already.   
  
Despite the increase in activity, he hadn’t expected to see anything in the area, particularly not where he was currently. The splash of blood on the pavement, therefore, caught him by surprise, his foot arrested in motion, hovering above a smear of red.   
  
He glanced to his right, where a large office building towered up to the sky. There was a sign outside the doors which stated all the companies working there, most of the telecommunications. Blood coated the entrance to the building, smeared in large swathes over the glass doors. At the foot of the door lay what Sanghyuk assumed had once been something human. It was in pieces, practically torn limb from limb, one of its arms laying a good couple of feet from the rest of it. It was difficult to see through all the blood but it looked like it had had its heart ripped out.   
  
Sanghyuk stumbled backwards from the destruction, heart pounding in his chest. He had to swallow hard several times to keep the bile from rising in his throat, hands reaching back for something to steady himself against. His fingers found the cold metal of a nearby lamp post and he leaned against it heavily, trying to get his stomach under control. It took him longer than he would have expected.  
  
Once he could look at the mess in front of the building without feeling like heaving, he took a few steps forwards, towards it, trying to work out— what, exactly, it had been. He got close enough to see a skull, to see the fangs; a vampire then, ripped apart. He looked around, searching for— yes, there, a few feet away from the rest of it, further even than the arm. The vamp’s heart, carried away for a short distance and then dropped, abandoned.   
  
Sanghyuk had, as of yet, not seen a kill as violent as this one. That first time hadn’t even compared to the sheer destruction of this. Either this kill had been more personal, or whatever had done it was harbouring a lot more violence than Sanghyuk had even suspected, but it terrified him, either way.   
  
He had been, shamefully, just a touch relieved to realise that whatever had been killed in such a way had been a vampire, but that moment had passed. Not even vampires deserved to be killed like this. That was one of the rules of being a hunter, that you killed in a humane way, that even vampires deserved some level of compassion in death. This— this execution held none of that care.   
  
There was nothing he could do for it now though. He turned, heading back to the safety of the streetlights, to go back to HQ. It wasn’t too far of a walk but these attacks always left him feel unsettled, vulnerable, and he hated that, so he even though he started out walking, he ended up running, making it back within the half hour, well before his shift was supposed to end.   
  
“Sanghyuk?” Sungjae, whose head had been bent over some papers spread out over his desk, looked highly surprised to see you. “Why are you back?”   
  
“I need—” He felt jittery, on edge. He sat himself down on a spare chair near Sungjae’s desk. “There’s been another one of those weird attacks. On the vampires, I mean. I came to report it.”   
  
Sungjae blinked, slowly, like he was absorbing that. “Oh.”   
  
“It— it was completely torn apart. Like, literally dismembered, there was so much blood—” Sanghyuk cut himself off, realizing in his distress he was babbling.   
  
Sungjae rose to his feet, reaching out a hand to squeeze Sanghyuk’s shoulder. “I’ll go let them know.”  
  
“Tell them that they’ll have to arrange some sort of clean up,” Sanghyuk said. “It was— left in front of an office building, if that gets found by the workers, there’ll be mass panic.”   
  
Sungjae gave a tight nod and strode off to go tell the powers that be of what Sanghyuk had found. He knew that he should report it himself but he didn’t want to have to explain it all over again. There had been no words that could describe that horror.  
  
Someone set a cup of coffee down in front of him and he jumped a good foot in the air. “Careful,” said Ilhoon, taking Sungjae’s vacated seat. “You don’t want to put a hole in the ceiling.”   
  
Sanghyuk rolled his eyes, trying to stop his shaking, and picked up the coffee. “I’m not that tall,” he said. He took a sip and then made a face. “Blurgh.”   
  
“Don’t give me that,” Ilhoon said. “You knew it was disgusting before you drank it.”   
  
“And that means I can’t complain?” Sanghyuk set it back down, pushing it away. “Thanks, anyway.”   
  
“Mmmm,” Ilhoon said, in an undertone. “Sungjae told me that you saw another one of those vampires.” He gave Sanghyuk a look with an odd sympathy in it, like he understood. He maybe did, best of them all, having found a body himself, even if the one he’d stumbled across hadn’t been— as bad as the one tonight.  
  
Sanghyuk’s hand convulsed around the cup. “Yeah, it— it wasn’t pretty.”   
  
“He mentioned that too.” Ilhoon leaned back in his chair for minute, thinking. When he spoke, his voice was calm and measured. Sanghyuk envied him that right this moment. “Jesus, just— what do you think is _doing_ this?”   
  
“I honestly don’t know,” Sanghyuk offered. “I wanted to think it’s human, but no human could do what I saw tonight. We don’t have the strength to do that with our bare hands. Especially not against a vampire. But the thought that there’s some kind of supe out there doing this— that is fucking terrifying. A were couldn’t do this, and neither could most of the different kind of fae. Which leaves a demon, and that isn’t something we could handle, if we came across it. Not one this strong.”   
  
“It could be another vamp,” Ilhoon mused.   
  
“But why would another vampire be killing their own?” Sanghyuk asked. “I mean, you get fights over territory and the like, but these are taking place all over the city. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of this.”   
  
Ilhoon gave him a slight smile. He looked tired, dark circles under his eyes, unusual on him. Sanghyuk wondered how he’d only just noticed, how wrapped up he had been in himself for the past while that he’d missed something like this. “I know you like to get involved in these things,” Ilhoon said, “but this isn’t something you have to figure out yourself, you know. Let the higher up guys work out what this is.”   
  
Sanghyuk shook his head. “I’m not trying to take this all on,” he said. “I— I just— it’s hard to not be preoccupied with, you know? Not when this thing is prowling the streets somewhere.”   
  
Ilhoon shrugged. “As of now, it’s only killing vamps, so don’t let it distract you too much. It— it’s ugly, and unpleasant, but we still have to try and keep our heads.” He pushed himself to his feet, snatching Sanghyuk’s coffee off him and drinking half of it in one go, despite it being lukewarm. “I’m tired of telling you this, but go home, Sanghyuk. Get some sleep. You look like shit. I’m going to drag you out one of these nights, you look like you need to be reminded how to have some fun.”   
  
“Well, what about you?” Sanghyuk said heatedly. “With your dark circles, you look like one of the undead yourself.”   
  
Ilhoon flipped him off behind his back. “Fuck off.”


	9. Chapter 9

Ilhoon made good on his threat.  
  
If it had been up to Sanghyuk, this wouldn’t have been how he spent his long overdue Saturday night off. He had been enjoying a particularly close relationship with his laptop recently, watching any new show that seemed appealing to him, and he’d been kind of looking forward to continuing that trend, if he was honest. It was as good a way to spend his time as any.   
  
But what Ilhoon wanted, Ilhoon got, and since Sungjae and Hyunsik were apparently useless in the face of him, Sanghyuk had found himself on the end of the three of them persuading him to come out with them. Which explained why he was currently sitting in one of those clubs that he had now decided he _hated_.   
  
“You’ve been so miserable recently,” Sungjae said bluntly, putting down two shot glasses on the table in front of them. “Drink these and feel better.”   
  
“Alcohol probably isn’t going to make me feel better,” Sanghyuk said. In fact, he knew from experience that it just seemed to make everything so much worse.   
  
“Shut up and drink it,” Sungjae said. “We’re doing this for you.”   
  
Sanghyuk grumbled and Hyunsik gave him a sympathetic smile. It didn’t make Sanghyuk smile back, though he did feel a little bit better.  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said, “we really are doing this for you. We’re just trying to cheer you up. You need to relax, have a few drinks, maybe dance a bit.” He nudged one of the shot glasses towards him. “Maybe find someone to help you get over the ex.”   
  
Sanghyuk groaned aloud at that and took the two shots in quick succession before anyone could say anything else. Ilhoon and Sungjae both beamed at him proudly. Sanghyuk just motioned at them to get him another one.   
  
An hour later he was drunk enough that everything felt— dim, somehow, like his thoughts had been softened and he could stop thinking about everything that had been occupying his mind for the past few weeks and months. It wasn’t, he found, entirely as pleasant a feeling as he’d been hoping it would be. But then it hadn’t been in a long time.  
  
Sungjae and Ilhoon were dancing together, Ilhoon’s arms slung around Sungjae’s shoulders, their hips grinding together slowly. They had started making out a couple of minutes ago and Sanghyuk was having trouble drawing his attention away, fixated by the way they moved together.   
  
He needed more alcohol, he decided.   
  
He pushed away from the wall he had been leaning against and made his way to the bar. He leaned against it heavily and was just about to hold out his hand to signal the barman when someone slid a drink across the bar to him.   
  
He looked up and found himself looking at a dark haired man who had the kind of winning smile that Sanghyuk associated with sharp teeth and sharper wit. “Hey,” the guy said.  
  
“Hi,” Sanghyuk said. He touched the side of the glass. It was filled with something clear. “What’s this?”   
  
“Double vodka and lemonade,” the man said. “For you.”   
  
Sanghyuk stared, as levelly as he could considering how drunk he was. “I’m afraid I don’t take drinks from strangers.”   
  
“I’m Minho.” The man’s smile widened. “There, now I’m not a stranger, am I?”  
  
Sanghyuk looked away. “Well, you sort of are. I’m Sanghyuk.”   
  
“Nice to meet you.”  
  
Sanghyuk ran his finger around the rim of the glass. He’d had this happen before, drinks bought for him, a fumble in the alley behind the club. But before they got to that, there were motions they had to go through, a procedure, and Sanghyuk wasn’t sure he had the energy for it tonight. He no longer cared for the flirting, not in a place like this. It was pointless. He knew what this man wanted from him. Knew once he got it, they’d never speak again. So why bother talking now.  
  
He pushed the drink aside and saw Minho’s smile flicker and fade a little. But then Sanghyuk stepped in close, murmured in his ear. “I don’t take drinks from strangers, but I don’t mind fucking them.” Minho jerked back, eyes wide, and Sanghyuk didn’t blink. “I’m not really a patient person, so let’s just get to the part we’re interested in.”  
  
Minho looked utterly flustered for a moment, but then he said quickly, “Yeah— yeah, let’s do that.” He practically stumbled on himself, he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. It was always so easy.  
  
Not five minutes later Sanghyuk stumbled out of the side door of the club, Minho pressed against his front. He was pressed up against the outside wall of the club, cold through the thin material of his shirt, Minho’s mouth on his, kissing him a little sloppily thanks to the alcohol they had both consumed. This felt like deja vu, like every encounter Sanghyuk said over and over he wasn’t going to repeat. But he couldn’t seem to stop.  
  
Minho’s hands fumbled for his belt, getting it open more through luck than any skill. He had his hand wrapped around Sanghyuk’s cock before Sanghyuk realised that he should probably be returning the favour. Even that felt like a little too much effort for him at this point.   
  
He was hard, somehow, panting into Minho’s mouth as he worked his own hand past the waistband of Minho’s boxers, but it felt off, wrong. It felt like it was happening to someone else, like it wasn’t his hand, it wasn’t his cock. None of it felt _real_.   
  
The only time anything had felt real enough for him had been with Jaehwan, and suddenly all he could think of was fangs sinking into his inner thigh, Jaehwan’s hair silky against his hands as he arched into the pain, the feeling of Jaehwan feeding from him —   
  
“Jaehwan,” he gasped aloud, hips jerking into the touch on his cock, his knees buckling slightly. “ _Jaehwan_ —”  
  
This, he realised belatedly, had not been the way to fix the coldness that seemed to run through him now like an inner core.   
  
——  
  
Jaehwan had followed Sanghyuk to this club from his apartment, sat on a building opposite to wait for him to come out. He had been dressed in that way which Jaehwan knew wouldn’t end well for him, but Sanghyuk would be drunk, and might need protecting, and that was all Jaehwan could do for him, now.   
  
He hadn’t had to wait too long before the side door for the nightclub opened and Sanghyuk stumbled out, attached at every point to another man, a strange, new one, who wasted no time in pushing Sanghyuk against the wall and touching him— _his_ Sanghyuk.   
  
Jaehwan flitted closer, down onto the stairwell of the building he was on, as close as he dared get, even with the charm protecting him from Sanghyuk’s notice. It had been so long since he’d seen Sanghyuk like this, and even when it was another human’s filthy hands on him, he still looked beautiful, eyes half shut, mouth slack whenever the strange man pulled away.   
  
“Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk gasped suddenly, his spine arching. Jaehwan jerked, taking a few steps back in case he had been caught. The man with his hand on Sanghyuk’s cock didn’t seem to either notice or care that Sanghyuk was saying another man’s name.   
  
“Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk said again, and Jaehwan felt tight inside, all of the pain he’d been burying deep inside him for so long gathering into a ball in the middle of his chest. “ _Jaehwan_ —” and then Sanghyuk was coming, holding onto the stranger’s shoulders tightly.   
  
Jaehwan watched him as the stranger followed suit, his face against Sanghyuk’s shoulder. Sanghyuk turned his face away, a hitch between his brows that Jaehwan wanted to flit down and smooth out. The stranger stepped back, tucking himself away, throwing Sanghyuk a grin and a glib _thanks_. Sanghyuk didn’t answer.   
  
The strange disappeared back into the nightclub and the second he was gone, Sanghyuk sank down against the wall, skin scraping in a way that must have been painful, and started to cry, hands pressed against his mouth in an attempt at smothering the sound, but it still tore at Jaehwan’s ears.   
  
The painful lump in Jaehwan’s chest felt like it was crippling him down, as he hunched down on the rooftop and tried to avoid his own threatening tears. Sanghyuk, his Sanghyuk, his love, was down there crying, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, do anything about it. He wouldn’t go to him to give him comfort, not with the smell of another man all over him, not when each sob seemed to shave another part of Jaehwan away with a white hot laceration. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever loathed himself more.   
  
Eventually, one of Sanghyuk’s friends, the skinny one with the terrible hair, came out, taking stock of the situation with a quickness that Jaehwan was surprised to see in a human. Wordlessly, he helped Sanghyuk sort himself out, his hands at once efficient and gentle, and ushered him back into the nightclub.   
  
Something had to give. Jaehwan knew he should come clean with Sanghyuk, admit everything just like Sanghyuk had asked him to last time they had spoken. Maybe he owed it, to Sanghyuk, to himself, maybe—  
  
Jaehwan gripped the railing of the banister of the fire escape he was on, until his knuckles turned white. He was so frightened.  
  
——  
  
Ilhoon’s apartment was small, and in many ways it was an odd mirror of Sanghyuk’s. HQ didn’t feel the need for variety in the places they put their hunters up in, apparently. But despite the similarities in shape and size, Ilhoon’s apartment felt homier, more lived in, somehow, than Sanghyuk’s did.   
  
Sanghyuk found himself shoved onto Ilhoon’s nondescript green couch, ended up leaning against the arm of it, slightly dazed. He could still feel that stranger’s hands on him, but the memory of it was fuzzy, already. He was possibly drunker than he’d realized.  
  
Ilhoon puttered away to make them both some coffee wordlessly, let Sanghyuk have his thoughts. But he eventually came back with a mug in each hand and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, facing Sanghyuk. He passed Sanghyuk a red mug, while he kept the blue, and waited until Sanghyuk numbly took a sip before he said, “Okay. You need to tell me what’s going on.”  
  
Sanghyuk looked at him, met his eyes, and was irresistibly reminded of Hakyeon, somehow. “Nothing is going on,” Sanghyuk murmured. He wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the ceramic warm his fingers. The coffee was strong, good. Ilhoon had an actual machine though only god knew how he afforded it.  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said, and while he wasn’t being unkind, his tone was sharp, “I just found you crying in an alley outside a club. Either something happened with that guy you left with that I’ll need to do something about, or this is about something completely different, in which case I still deserve to know.”  
  
Sanghyuk took another sip of his coffee, stalling, trying to wait out Ilhoon who was never really a patient person. He was tonight.  
  
“That guy didn’t do anything,” Sanghyuk said, and saw Ilhoon’s shoulders relax, just a fraction, “it’s something different.”  
  
“I’d guessed so.” Ilhoon put his coffee down on the table, then leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs so he could gaze at Sanghyuk intensely. “Something’s been up for a while, Sanghyuk. Everyone has noticed. We’ve all been really worried about you.”  
  
Sanghyuk was strangely touched. “You have?”  
  
“Of course.” Ilhoon blinked slowly, in a way that reminded Sanghyuk of a cat. “You’re our friend and we care about you. And you’ve been miserable as sin for ages.” He paused, for a moment. “Is this about the guy you were dating?”  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said immediately, then sighed. “Maybe. Kind of.”  
  
“Is it— is it about the fuck buddy you had?”  
  
And there it was, Ilhoon’s way of seeing through all the nonsense to the heart of the matter. “Yeah,” Sanghyuk admitted softly. “I guess it is.”  
  
Ilhoon sighed. “I knew it. Did you go back to him after breaking up with that other guy?”  
  
“No. Not exactly. I wanted to talk to him but he didn’t want to talk to me,” Sanghyuk said, then his mouth twisted. He handed Ilhoon his coffee mug, so he could put it on the coffee table. Once his hands were free he promptly crossed his arms over his chest, like he was trying to hold himself together.  
  
Ilhoon briefly glanced into Sanghyuk’s coffee mug before he set it aside. “So what? You guys broke up?”  
  
“Can you break up without having dated?” Sanghyuk asked, voice catching a little.  
  
“Of course you can,” Ilhoon said, frowning. “Sanghyuk, for the last two years, this guy has been there, in the background. That’s a long time for a fuck buddy to be around. That’s a break up.”  
  
Sanghyuk was quiet. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t like thinking about it like that because it suggested Jaehwan had an emotional hold on him.   
  
He looked away from Ilhoon, leaning further back into the couch, like he was trying to retreat into himself. He was still tipsy, the buzz of the alcohol numbing him a little. It had all gone so wrong. And he should have known it would. Sanghyuk was a vampire hunter. And Jaehwan was a vampire. This wasn’t meant to work, in any capacity. He just hadn’t expected it to cause him so much anguish.  
  
He was just so tired.  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said quietly, “the entire time you’ve been with this guy, you’ve never really spoken about him. I don’t know his age, or his job, or even his name. You hardly ever tell us anything, and when you do offer up something, it’s always bare bones. And sometimes it’s an outright lie.” Sanghyuk felt a stab of guilt at that, because he hadn’t wanted them to know he’d been lying to them. They were his friends. “I know that you don’t like us knowing your business, but it’s hard to help when you’re so mum about everything.”  
  
Sanghyuk stared down at his own knees, at a little spot on his jeans, and Ilhoon sighed, standing again. “I’ll get you some water,” Ilhoon murmured, and Sanghyuk didn’t turn to watch, just listened to Ilhoon’s footsteps as he walked the short distance to the kitchen.  
  
The tears on Sanghyuk’s face had dried, and the salt trails they’d left behind on his cheeks felt stiff. All he could think about was how exhausted he was from this whole ordeal. And it was impossible to explain why, because it all centered around Jaehwan, and what he was, who he was. What he’d done to Sanghyuk.  
  
There was the sound of a glass being put on the counter and the refrigerator door opening. Sanghyuk took a shuddering breath in. “He’s a vampire,” he whispered, barely audible, wanting Ilhoon to hear and yet also wishing he wouldn’t.   
  
There was silence, Ilhoon stilling, for a few beats, and Sanghyuk didn’t turn to look at him. Then there was the sound of water being poured into a glass, and the pitcher being put back into the fridge, the door closing once more.  
  
When Ilhoon came back into his line of sight, standing over him, Sanghyuk looked up at him, feeling detached and slow, like he was witnessing this scene in some second hand fashion, or was in a dream.   
  
Ilhoon held the glass of cool water out and Sanghyuk took it, the movement slow. Then Ilhoon resumed his perch on the coffee table, face carefully blank. “I know.”  
  
Sanghyuk stared. “You know,” he repeated, lips feeling numb.  
  
“Yes,” Ilhoon said. He moved, so he was sitting beside Sanghyuk on the couch. Sanghyuk followed the movement vaguely, brain feeling miles behind. “I— sometimes I just know things, or suspect things” For a flash, he looked, oddly, a little embarrassed. “I have magical potential, but I didn’t want to go into sorcery, much to my parents’ chagrin. I don’t know if I would have been any good at it anyway, I can’t do anything spectacular. I just get _feelings_ , sometimes, about things that are happening, or going to happen.”   
  
“You’re a seer,” Sanghyuk said, almost wonderingly, and Ilhoon shook his head.  
  
“No. I don’t get visions, either when I’m asleep or awake. I don’t _see_ , I just feel,” he said, and then paused to think. “Like, sometimes I’ll just know that Hyunsik is going to forget his sandwich, so I bring an extra. And it’s different from just having a non-supernatural gut feeling. All people get those, me included. But every once in a while I just— I feel something, and I know it’s true.”  
  
“That would come in handy, on a hunt,” Sanghyuk said slowly. He wondered if he was in shock.  
  
Again, Ilhoon shook his head. “Nah. I can’t control it. I can’t sit down and think about a question and just know the answer. They just come randomly, I’ll be making tea or filling out paperwork or listening to Sungjae ramble and then just suddenly get a little mental push. They vary in— in specificity, like when and where, as well as in— I don’t know— general importance.”  
  
“Do the others know?”  
  
“Hyunsik probably suspects, but I haven’t told them,” Ilhoon said. “I worry that they’d want to know the things I know, and sometimes I don’t want to tell them. Sometimes I know things I don’t want to.” At Sanghyuk’s questioning glance, Ilhoon sighed, but he continued, “I knew Sungjae was going to freeze on you, at some point. I didn’t know when but I could sense a bad hunt was coming. I know— I know that Hyunsik wants to quit hunting. I know that I’m _not_ going to quit hunting.” He paused. “I know— you’re not going to live very long.”  
  
Sanghyuk absorbed that, not really feeling surprised. He wasn’t going to quit hunting. He knew this was going to end bloody and early. “When?” he whispered. He wanted to ask how, too, but didn’t quite feel brave enough.  
  
“I don’t know, I just get the feeling that you aren’t going to be around too much longer,” Ilhoon said softly. Sanghyuk looked away, down at his glass of water. He took a sip, found the coolness of the water somewhat jarring. “I— because I knew you were sleeping with a vamp, I wondered if maybe that was why.”  
  
Sanghyuk snorted. “He’s— he’s a bastard, but he’d never hurt me. Not like that,” he murmured, knowing it was truth. Jaehwan was many things, but Sanghyuk didn’t believe he would ever raise a hand to him. Which was funny, because two years ago, when they had first met, that had been Sanghyuk’s primary fear. That Jaehwan would eat him.   
  
He heaved a heavy sigh. “So— you’ve known. Was it just— just the feeling?” Sanghyuk asked, hopeful. If Ilhoon knew because of some supernatural interference, well, Sanghyuk couldn’t help that. But he didn’t like the idea that he’d maybe been leaving breadcrumbs.  
  
“That started it, but once I knew it— things clicked into place,” Ilhoon said. “You can claim your scars are from adolescent chickenpox all you like, but— I can see those are healed over vamp bites. People don’t usually know what those look like because— well. Most vamps don’t give humans a chance to heal.” Sanghyuk swallowed, fighting down the urge to touch his neck. “And you were always so skittish about the topic, and you never showed us any pictures of him, or wanted us to meet him, and I just— I knew I was right. And then it all solidified when I saw you with him.”  
  
That was enough to break through the strange fog that seemed to have settled over Sanghyuk’s brain. “What?” he asked, feeling faint. “Why didn’t you—”  
  
“Tattle on you?” Ilhoon finished for him. “Because if you wanted to fuck a vampire, then that has nothing to do with me. I have no interest in interfering with your sex life like that—” Sanghyuk knew he made some kind of face, and Ilhoon gave him a speaking glance in return, “—I will point you in the right direction, but I figured it was your funeral if you wanted to invite a vampire into your bed.”  
  
That was an unusual philosophy for a vampire hunter to have. But then, Ilhoon was unusual as a whole. “Thanks. When did you— see us?”  
  
Ilhoon thought about it. “It was a while ago now. Remember when Hyunsik got that stomach flu, and you and I went out fishing together?”  
  
“That was— Ilhoon, that was a year and a half ago,” Sanghyuk said, somewhat choked. He felt slightly like he might throw up.  
  
“Yeah,” Ilhoon said simply, like it was nothing. “I could sense— something, at the club that night. I went snooping, saw you ‘round the back with him. He was wearing some kind of charm, to mask the vampire aura, I guess— but I saw you cut yourself, saw the way he went for the blood— and it all clicked into place.”  
  
Thank god it had been Ilhoon, and not Sungjae, because Sungjae probably would have told, simply because he would have thought it was the right thing to do. But then again, Sungjae also probably wouldn’t have gone snooping in the first place.   
  
“So, you and the vampire have parted ways,” Ilhoon said, getting them back on topic like it was nothing, and Sanghyuk nearly laughed. It would have been a hysterical laugh, so he was glad he held it in. “Are you just— did you still want to be with him?”  
  
Sanghyuk opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again, because he wanted to say both yes and no. Deep down, he knew the answer was yes. He wanted to be with Jaehwan. But he didn’t want the abuse. He wanted to be with a Jaehwan that was softer, that didn’t act so— vampire. And that was impossible.   
  
Finally Sanghyuk murmured, “I do but I don’t. There have been moments, in the past, where he made me feel so good, not just physically but emotionally. But more and more it’s just been borderline abuse, and I can’t do it anymore. I can’t go back to that. And I know he won’t change.”  
  
“Sanghyuk, no offence but like— what did you expect from him? He’s a vamp,” Ilhoon said, frowning slightly.  
  
Sanghyuk had to bite down on his tongue to keep himself from blurting out that Hakyeon and Taekwoon had managed fine. Ilhoon didn’t know about them, and besides, he and Jaehwan didn’t have what Taekwoon and Hakyeon had, and he didn’t _want_ to have that with Jaehwan. God, the idea of being in love with Jaehwan made his toes curl in horror. This was enough anguish, and he was barely invested. He couldn’t imagine the damage Jaehwan would have caused to him if Sanghyuk hadn’t been able to keep a handle on himself and fallen in love.  
  
“I— I didn’t expect anything,” Sanghyuk said, “and I anticipated it all going sour, but I didn’t— I didn’t expect it to have a lasting effect on me, and it has. He’s like a drug, even though he hurts me, I still want him. I think— I think something’s gone wrong in me. He was my first, in so many ways, and it’s like being with him ruined me for anything else. There have to be some mental repercussions, you know, when someone so young and inexperienced ends up intimately involved with a vampire. But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time.”  
  
“There’s a lot about vampires we don’t know,” Ilhoon said softly. “They are totally magical beings, and the magic in them does do things to our subconscious. It is wholly possible his magic bled over into you, had some effect. They’ve done studies on how ‘ubis — or fae and demons of any kind, really — sort of cause humans to imprint on them, if they mate with us. It isn’t too far fetched to imagine some echo of that might happen with people who sleep with vampires. Being a virgin would just add in another layer.”  
  
Sanghyuk hadn’t really thought about that, and he wasn’t sure he totally bought it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to buy it. “Maybe,” Sanghyuk whispered. “I think a lot of it is just— me. And him, even without the vampire aspect. He’s very charismatic, and the sharpness in him appeals to me. I’ve always been attracted to things with sharp teeth, with precise edges.” And Sanghyuk had tried so hard to fix himself, and poor Jongsuk had definitely been a part of that. Jongsuk who was soft where Jaehwan was sharp, soothed where Jaehwan cut. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.  
  
“Vamps are captivating, just by their nature, but Sanghyuk— are you— are you in love?” Ilhoon asked.  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, eyes fluttering shut with a sigh. “I knew falling in love with him would be stupid, so I didn’t. I made sure of it. But I could have. I might have. If it hadn’t all gone so wrong.” He swallowed, finding his throat felt constricted. “I think I almost did.”  
  
“It sounds to me like you cared for him, even if you weren’t in love,” Ilhoon said, tone neutral. “After two years, I imagine it would have been hard to remain utterly implacable.”   
  
“Yeah,” Sanghyuk whispered. “But I can’t go on. I can’t. I think he maybe— cares too. But he’s too toxic. So I can’t go back. I broke it off, it’s done, and I know it’s for the best. But I feel so broken in the aftermath, and I don’t know how to fix myself from it.”  
  
Ilhoon looked down, clearly thinking. It was so surreal, to finally talk about it with someone, someone _human_. Sanghyuk still was halfway wondering if this was some strange post-trauma hallucination.   
  
“Have you talked to a sorcerer about it?” Ilhoon asked, and Sanghyuk shook his head. “Maybe you should. There might be a spell that could help you if it’s a magical issue. And if there’s not, then I know there’s general potions that can help with— post-supernatural creature trauma. They have them for after people tangle with faes and demons. I imagine they’d work on you, if you just need some peace.”   
  
Sanghyuk hadn’t thought about that. But he really wouldn’t have, would he, because that would have been admitting there had been some kind of— trauma. And he’d been covering his ears for years and trying to tell himself he hadn’t fallen victim to something. But he had.   
  
“Do you know a sorcerer you can trust?” Ilhoon asked.  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t even have to think. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I do.”  
  
——  
  
Jaehwan went home and locked himself in his room, and realized his fear still outweighed his guilt, his pain, his— his _love_. He couldn’t go to Sanghyuk.  
  
He was a coward. He hated himself so fucking much.  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk woke at midday, on Ilhoon’s couch, a blanket tossed over him. There was a full glass of water on the coffee table beside him, and two blue pain pills. Sanghyuk was grateful; he felt like death warmed over.   
  
He took the pain pills, sipped at the water, and just sat there for a long time, waiting for them to kick in, staring at the blue sky through Ilhoon’s window. Ilhoon hadn’t left a note, but he felt like he remembered Ilhoon slipping out around dawn, probably to go see where Sungjae and Hyunsik had ended up.  
  
Maybe Sanghyuk should have just kept sleeping with Sungjae, should have fallen in love with him and subsequently fallen into bed with the other two, had a vampire hunter polyamorous relationship. That would have actually been less complicated than having a fuck buddy relationship with Jaehwan, which was really saying something.  
  
It took two hours before Sanghyuk felt capable of standing, of moving. He needed to shower, but he had no fresh clothes here and didn’t feel like crawling back into the ones he was wearing. So he’d just do it at home.   
  
His car keys were on the kitchen table. Ilhoon had driven them here last night, and Sanghyuk vaguely remembered it. He was glad he wouldn’t have to bus or taxi home. He didn’t have the energy for it.  
  
As he went through the motions, driving home, showering, dressing, he thought numbly about his conversation with Ilhoon the previous night. The details were a little fuzzy, but he definitely remembered. He hadn’t hallucinated it.   
  
Sanghyuk wondered what happened now, how he could bounce back from this.  
  
Just as he thought this, his phone buzzed on the kitchen table. When he went to retrieve it, he saw a message from Ilhoon waiting.  
  
 _Just got back, you weren’t here. Made it home okay?_  
  
Sanghyuk swallowed, throat suddenly feeling thick. _Yeah_ , he sent back, _thank you, for everything_.  
  
A pause, Ilhoon typing. _You gonna go see that sorceror?_ he asked.   
  
Sanghyuk looked to his living room window, where the sky was pink, the sun setting, and his stomach sank. Then he remembered this was Kyungsoo, and he was always at his shop, day or night.   
  
Maybe Sanghyuk should wait a day, until he felt better, but he wasn’t sure he was going to feel better, unless he got some help. The hangover would clear up, but everything else— if it hadn’t cleared up in over a year, there was no point in waiting. And Kyungsoo would probably be able to do something about the hangover as well.   
  
_I’m going to go now._  
  
——  
  
Sanghyuk hadn’t been to see Kyungsoo in— a really long time, he realized with some dismay. He knew Hakyeon had gone to visit him a few times, but Sanghyuk didn’t have the same repertoire with him, felt strange just coming by to chat, so he never did. And he hadn’t needed anything, not since his last tattoo. He touched the oak tree on his forearm, which was humming, as Sanghyuk approached Kyungsoo’s shop. It had been over a year, and yet the shop still looked the same. Maybe because nothing in it ever sold.   
  
The sign was flipped to open, even though the sun was gone from the sky, and there were lights on, dim and yellow. Sanghyuk pushed the front door open, the bell over it jingling lightly, heralding his entrance. The scent of the shop, old paper and smoke, the strange electrical smell of magic, made Sanghyuk feel oddly nostalgic, but mostly, he just felt safe.   
  
Kyungsoo was sitting behind the counter, reading a large book under a yellow light. He looked up as Sanghyuk approached, blinking owlishly behind his round glasses. “Sanghyuk,” he said, “it’s been a long time.” His eyes flickered over Sanghyuk’s shoulder, at the darkened windows at the front of the shop. “I hadn’t realized the sun had set.” He marked his page in the book and then closed it, walked around the counter to the front of the shop and flipped the sign to closed.   
  
“You don’t have to close up,” Sanghyuk said, smiling tentatively. “For once, I’m not going to be asking for anything illegal.”  
  
Kyungsoo snorted as he walked back, motioning for Sanghyuk to follow him as he went through the door behind the counter, into his workshop at the back of the shop. “I’d be closing up now anyway, though it never hurts to be cautious, when I’ve got a hunter here. Or a vamp,” Kyungsoo said as he walked. Once in the workshop he flipped the lights on, and looked up and up at Sanghyuk. “You look like shit,” he observed.  
  
“I— yeah,” Sanghyuk said lamely. Kyungsoo motioned to a seat at his work table, and Sanghyuk sank into it. Kyungsoo followed the movement with a strange, arrested focus, like he was already trying to work out what spell would fix Sanghyuk, what potion he could concoct to wipe away the dark circles. “Part of it is just that I am hungover like hell, but part of it is— stuff. Stuff I’m here for.”  
  
Kyungsoo didn’t sit; instead he chose to lean against the table. “It’s been a little over a year,” Kyungsoo said softly. “You seem very changed. What happened?”  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t know where to begin, the whole story was long and personal, and Sanghyuk didn’t know if he could drag it all out of himself. He felt too raw. “Jaehwan happened,” he finally said, deciding it was simple and truthful and conveyed everything he needed.  
  
“Ah,” Kyungsoo said delicately. “Yes, he’s rather— yes.”   
  
Sanghyuk almost laughed. Almost. “Yes,” he echoed, then looked away, down at his hands. “I don’t know how much you know,” Sanghyuk said softly. “But me and Jaehwan had a— a thing. And now we don’t.”  
  
“I know less than you think,” Kyungsoo murmured, and Sanghyuk looked up at him, finding his face free of judgement, but not able to garner anything more from his soft features. “Why did you come to me tonight, Sanghyuk?”  
  
“I wanted to ask about— about imprinting,” Sanghyuk said. “I’m not in love with Jaehwan, but it’s like— like something is off, inside of me. I feel like being with him broke something in me. And I’m exhausted and frustrated and feel sad and numb and I just— can you imprint on a vamp? Could that be what’s wrong with me?” He hated how small he sounded, how desperate. Like a child seeking answers to a problem too vast for them to ever understand.  
  
Kyungsoo was frowning. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s utterly impossible,” Kyungsoo said slowly, “but it is unlikely to imprint on a vamp.” Sanghyuk swallowed thickly. “Rather than an imprint, I’d put it down to a glamour, but I know you haven’t been glamoured.”  
  
No, he hadn’t. “I was hoping to do an energy cleanse, or— something,” Sanghyuk whispered. “I was hoping it would help.”  
  
Kyungsoo sighed heavily. “Sanghyuk,” he said softly, “vamps work differently than other supes, and just feeling the energy coming off you right now— you are free of any vampiric taint. I could do a cleanse on you but it wouldn’t do what you want it to.”  
  
“So none of this— it’s not Jaehwan, really, it’s just me,” Sanghyuk murmured numbly. He, horribly, felt like he might cry. That would do no favors for his headache.  
  
“Not necessarily, just because there’s no magical aspect doesn’t mean it all rests on you, Sanghyuk,” Kyungsoo said. “It could just be the impact of a relationship gone awry. I am, sadly, not really equipped to handle such things. All I can do is make you a potion or two, for easier sleep, for less anxiety.”  
  
“Can you make a potion for forgetting,” Sanghyuk whispered, and a tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away, embarrassed. This was so stupid, all this for something that meant nothing, in the end.   
  
Kyungsoo gently touched Sanghyuk’s shoulder. “I could,” he murmured, “but not for something so large as that. The damage it would do to your mind would not be worth it.”   
  
There was something odd, in his voice, that made Sanghyuk look up at his face. But whatever Kyungsoo was thinking, Sanghyuk could not read it in his expression. “It’s alright,” Sanghyuk said, “I— I didn’t really mean it, anyway. Jaehwan played a very large part in shaping me into the hunter, the person, I am now. It may not have been for the better but— I probably can’t afford to forget it.”  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Kyungsoo said, “if there is one thing I know, it’s that while imprinting on a vampire isn’t a thing, becoming addicted to one is. They’re— our instincts warn us off, but there is something very deeply compelling about them, and you are not the first human to be caught in such a trap. It’s hard to go back to the light of day after tasting what a vampire has to offer, and I imagine for someone like you it would be even more difficult, as a hunter, as someone who can never fully pull out of that world. Add to the fact that Hakyeon is a vampire now, as is Wonshik, and they are both irrevocably tied to Jaehwan, and it’s no wonder you’re struggling. The best way to get over something like this is distance and then time, but if you cannot get the distance in the first place, then it’s just like struggling against quicksand.”  
  
“Should I kill Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk said flatly. “I’ve thought about it, sometimes.”  
  
That got a little smile out of Kyungsoo. “That would not help, I do not think.”  
  
Sanghyuk pressed his lips together. “No, you’re probably right, but I just— like I said, it’s over. We have distance. I stopped going to see him. But it hasn’t helped. Do I just need more time?”  
  
“The issue with things like this, is it isn’t just about what you do, but also about what he does,” Kyungsoo said, looking strangely like he’d taken a bite out of a lemon. “The Balance is an odd thing, in that way.”  
  
Sanghyuk blinked. “What do you mean?”  
  
Kyungsoo was frowning, nibbling his bottom lip. When he finally spoke, it was slowly. "As a sorcerer, it must remain neutral. It is— difficult to explain the process of our ways to someone who is not a sorcerer. If a hunter comes to me and asks for a warded blade to kill vampires, they give me payment, and I make and give them the blade— it does not affect my neutrality. If a vampire then comes to me and asks for some sort of spell to protect themselves from a hunter's blade, they pay me, and I cast the spell— this also does not affect my neutrality. But I cannot make the warded blade and then give it to the hunter without having been asked, having been paid, for my own selfish desires to see vampires dead. That is taking sides. That is not neutrality. Do you understand?"  
  
Sanghyuk blinked, a little lost. "Yes," he said, "I do, I guess, but I don't understand why you are telling me this."  
  
"Because there are things I know that I cannot convey to you, not without jeopardizing my neutrality," Kyungsoo said.  
  
"Things you know— know about Jaehwan?" Sanghyuk asked, and Kyungsoo neither nodded nor shook his head, just stared, levelly, intensely. It made a shiver go down Sanghyuk's spine.   
  
"If— if I give you payment in exchange for the information, would that work?" he asked, and again, Kyungsoo didn't move, though his eyes were bright. Sanghyuk tried again. "I need to know whatever it is you know, I will pay you for it. Tell me your price."  
  
"Sit on the table," Kyungsoo said, voice very soft, and he moved away, towards the cabinets on the wall. Sanghyuk got up from his seat, perched on the edge of the table. Kyungsoo rummaged around in his cabinets, bringing out a wooden box. When he looked at Sanghyuk he said, "No, all the way on the table, sit on the middle of the pentagram and cross your legs."  
  
Sanghyuk was getting soot stains on his jeans, he thought, but he obeyed. He found he was trembling, slightly. He wondered why Kyungsoo hadn't asked for money. Maybe he knew Sanghyuk had very little. Maybe the price of this, because it was so personal, required something personal in return. The Balance was an odd thing.   
  
Kyungsoo put the box on the chair Sanghyuk had just vacated, and in it Sanghyuk could see a few jars of various herbs, he rather thought, and a large metal mixing bowl with a straw figurine in it, surrounded by kindling and some of the herbs from the jars.   
  
The sight of the straw figurine unnerved him. Human shaped charms— they were dangerous things, at times. "I— what is that?"  
  
"It will not affect you, your payment in this will not alter your scales in the Balance in any way," Kyungsoo said, which solidified Sanghyuk's theory that it wasn't anything good. "It is a spell for another client, and I need help finishing it. Hold out your hands, palm up."  
  
Sanghyuk found he was shaking when he obeyed. Kyungsoo reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slim little blade. Sanghyuk swallowed. Of course this would involve blood.   
  
Kyungsoo grabbed the wrist of Sanghyuk's right hand and, before Sanghyuk could protest, drew the blade of the knife over his right palm diagonally. It didn't cut deeply, but it hurt, quite a bit, and Sanghyuk gasped, blinking away tears for a whole new reason. Kyungsoo grabbed his left wrist then and repeated the action.   
  
The cuts bled, not horribly, but it welled and dripped down, onto his jeans, the table. "Ow," Sanghyuk said.   
  
"Hold the bowl," Kyungsoo said, handing the metal mixing bowl over. "Make sure your palms touch it."  
  
 _My bleeding palms_ , Sanghyuk thought. He held the mixing bowl in his cupped hands, trying to stop his shaking. The little straw figurine had beads sewn into it, two for eyes and one for a belly button. The kindling around it was dark wood, and the herbs among it smelled like rosemary and lavender and something else that brought to mind rotting fruit.   
  
Kyungsoo pulled a box of matches from his front pocket, and Sanghyuk swallowed. "The bowl will get hot," Kyungsoo said, taking a match from the box and striking it against the side, lighting it. "It will feel like it is burning you, but it won't be."  
  
Sanghyuk didn't have time to tense up, to brace himself, because Kyungsoo had flicked the match into the bowl, and the whole thing immediately caught fire, red fire, and he yelped, only just managing not the drop it in its entirety. It warmed under his hands immediately, but it was only painful over his palms, over the cuts on his skin, where it burned like he'd grabbed a red hot poker.  
  
He bit into his lip, to keep from making a noise, from _screaming_. Only the knowledge that he wasn't actually being burned kept him holding onto the bowl, the flames flickering in front of his face.   
  
And then they were gone, the flames vanishing, and the bowl immediately cooled, as if it had been sitting out in the cold night for hours and hadn't just previously been on fire. In the absence of the bright light, Sanghyuk's vision was spotty, and it took a few seconds for him to see that everything in the bowl was gone, just a pile of ashes in the bottom remaining.   
  
Kyungsoo took the bowl from him, and Sanghyuk was left staring down at his hands, which had no blood on them, no cuts, just very thin white lines where the cuts had been. The droplets of blood on his jeans were still wet.  
  
"Thanks," Kyungsoo said nonchalantly, sifting through the ashes at the bottom of the bowl. Sanghyuk just stared at him, unable to believe the ridiculousness of his own life.   
  
"Are you going to tell me, now?" he asked. "Or do I have to endure more weirdness?"  
  
Kyungsoo was picking out what looked like little bones from the ashes in the bowl. "Yes," he said. "I'll tell you. You can get off the table, now."  
  
Sanghyuk didn't move. He wasn't sure if he could. So he just waited.  
  
Kyungsoo began slowly. "A few months ago, Jaehwan came to me, asked me to make him a charm," he said, very carefully. Sanghyuk had a bad feeling, stomach twisting with sudden dread. "You're— you're not going to like this, Sanghyuk, but again, the whole neutrality thing. I couldn't really say no."  
  
"Tell me," Sanghyuk whispered.  
  
"He asked me to make him a charm that would conceal him from a hunter's wards," Kyungsoo said, and Sanghyuk swayed, gripping the edge of the table. "And when I told him that would be almost impossibly difficult, because the number of wards designed for hunters were in the hundreds, and I couldn't make a charm that would protect from _all_ of them— he amended himself, and said he'd then take a charm that would, simply, conceal him from _your_ wards."   
  
Sanghyuk's skin felt hot and prickly in a flash, and then went cold. He felt like he might throw up. All these weeks with no bites, feeling something intangible pulling at him, it was because—  
  
He slid off the table, legs shaky under him but they held. "He's been— been following me— spying on me all this time," he said, gasping it out. "I thought I was free of him, at least physically if not emotionally, but he's been _watching me_ —" He cut himself off, thinking of all the crying he'd done, of the nights with Jongsuk, the despair-filled nights of hunting with nothing to show for it. Jaehwan had been there for it all, and Sanghyuk had thought he'd been safe from him in those moments. But Jaehwan had taken them too.  
  
This— this was too much.  
  
"Sanghyuk," Kyungsoo said softly, "I'm sorry."  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head sharply, not wanting to say anything in anger. He wasn't even mad at Kyungsoo, not really. No. This was on Jaehwan. It was always Jaehwan.  
  
He stumbled forward, and with every step felt a little steadier. "I— I really can't kill him, right?" Sanghyuk asked, before he was out the door of the workshop.   
  
"I would advise against it, for many reasons," Kyungsoo said, very softly. He hadn't moved, had simply turned to watch Sanghyuk go.  
  
"Why?" Sanghyuk asked. He felt like screaming, like sobbing, like dying.   
  
Kyungsoo stared at him, and for once, there was an emotion Sanghyuk could recognize in his wise eyes. It was sadness. "That would cost more than you can pay."  
  
Sanghyuk turned away, walked back through the shop and into the night.


	10. Chapter 10

Jaehwan woke right after dusk, rolled over, and very determinately went back to sleep. When he next awoke, it was a bit later, and he was alone, the house empty. Wonshik and Crazy often slipped out of the house early now. Jaehwan didn’t know where they went. He didn’t ask, they didn’t offer.  
  
He should get up, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, just yet. And he had time, anyway; he knew Sanghyuk wouldn’t be going into work until later, so at this moment he was, most likely, home. Home and safe, if not utterly alright.   
  
Jaehwan closed his eyes, trying to chase away the images of the previous night, the sounds. He reached, blindly, for his laptop on his nightstand. He’d watch something, distract himself. He sat up and opened his laptop, found the tab he needed with a little more force than was necessary on his poor trackpad. An episode of Breaking Bad started up as he slid his sunglasses on his face, the sound filling the room and drowning out his thoughts, the brightness of the screen, even on the lowest setting, burning away any residual images.  
  
He’d watched a couple of episodes in quick succession, before he felt something disturb the wards. For a moment he sighed, thinking it was simply Wonshik and Hongbin back earlier than expected, but then he realised— no, that was a human, that was—  
  
Sanghyuk.   
  
Even the knowledge that he hated himself for it didn’t stop the joy from welling in his chest. But he hoped— maybe, maybe they could make things better. Maybe he could stop being such a damn coward.   
  
Although he could sense that Sanghyuk was only just nearing the house, he still practically flung his laptop off himself in his haste to clear it away. His sunglasses followed suit, banished to a drawer in his dresser.   
  
He was lounging on his bed, the epitome of cool and collected, when the door to his bedroom slammed open hard enough to send it rattling in its frame. Jaehwan slid out of bed, standing tall, glaring at Sanghyuk, who stood in the doorway glaring back. “Would you mind not destroying my property?” he asked sarcastically.  
  
“Would you mind explaining why you’re still apparently _stalking me_ ,” Sanghyuk yelled. He stomped into the room and slammed the door shut behind him, completely ignoring Jaehwan’s not-unreasonable request. “Give me one good reason not to stake you, Jaehwan. Just one. Because right now, I really want to.”  
  
Jaehwan raised his eyebrows in affected innocence, and Sanghyuk simply glowered at him. There was no trace, now, of the boy Jaehwan had seen last night, curled up and crying in a dark alley. This Sanghyuk was all armour and sharp edges, an utter contrast. "Moi?" Jaehwan said, wondering if he could lie his way out of this, "I have no idea what you're talking about."   
  
"Oh, fuck off with your lies," Sanghyuk said, loudly, clearly furious. Jaehwan wasn't sure he'd ever seen Sanghyuk so angry, so full of fire. And he'd seen Sanghyuk pretty angry before. His cheeks were all flushed, like he sometimes looked after Jaehwan finger-fucked him to orgasm. "I went to see Kyungsoo."  
  
Jaehwan frowned, his stomach sinking. Blast it. He would have thought— but of course not. Keeping things secret probably cost extra, with Kyungsoo. And Jaehwan had never specified for him to keep his mouth shut anyway. He'd just figured it had been damn well _implied_.  
  
He tried to maintain his composure, knowing full well he'd been found out. "Oh?" Jaehwan said, lightly, and Sanghyuk's fists clenched, "And is he a clairvoyant now? Did he whip out a crystal ball, and say he saw me lurking in the mists of your life?"  
  
"He said you commissioned him to make you an amulet that would, specifically, hide you from my wards," Sanghyuk spat, and Jaehwan couldn't keep the grimace off his face. "I'd say I can't believe you'd go so far to keep stalking me, to keep your possessive, filthy hands on me— but I can believe it all too easily at this point, Jaehwan."  
  
Jaehwan swallowed down the anger threatening to rise to the fore. He wasn't following Sanghyuk around to maintain a hold on him, he was protecting him. But of course Sanghyuk would think the worst. And Jaehwan couldn't exactly divulge everything he'd been getting up to, so all he could do was stare at Sanghyuk, his mouth clamped shut.   
  
Sanghyuk's chest was heaving, like he'd run a marathon. "Did you see anything fun?" he asked, nasty. "In the weeks you've been following me— anything entertaining, Jaehwan? Anything you want to pick a fight with me about this time?"  
  
"You've been unhappy," Jaehwan murmured, barely moving his lips, like he was trying not to disturb still water here. "I saw you last night, in the back of the club. "  
  
Sanghyuk's face flamed even redder. "That— I—" Sanghyuk stuttered out, seeming too flustered and angry for coherency, before he grounded himself. "You had no business watching that— it had nothing to do with you. My _life_ no longer has anything to do with you."  
  
"It does have to do with me," Jaehwan countered, boxing down his sudden overwhelming urge to smash something, to destroy all of the old, ridiculous furniture in this bedroom. To break _something_ , like he’d broken himself somewhere along the way. “We've been doing this for over two years now, I’ve had you in my life for _two years_ —"  
  
"Yes, and now we're done," Sanghyuk shouted, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Which means my life is no longer your business. And I want you fucking out of it, I told you that before."  
  
Jaehwan swallowed, remembering all too well their last meeting. He'd been going over and over it, amidst the dawning realization that he'd made a mistake. Because this time, this time it seemed like Sanghyuk, truly, was done.   
  
Jaehwan wrapped his arms around himself, trying to hold himself in, hold himself together. He’d lived for centuries and had never felt as wretched as Sanghyuk could make him feel. Sanghyuk could use words to hurt Jaehwan in ways that Taekwoon, for all he tried, would never even be able to come close to.   
  
"But you called my name," Jaehwan whispered to the floor. It had been agony, but it had also made a sweet ache start up in his chest. The thought that maybe Sanghyuk was missing him, the way Jaehwan missed Sanghyuk.  
  
"Yeah, because sometimes I have to think about you to get off," Sanghyuk snapped, "and then afterwards I felt like shit for it, because I hate that this is what I've been reduced to, that this is what you've reduced me to. "  
  
Jaehwan felt the words like a slap, and he had to work not to recoil. Sometimes he wondered how they could be coming at this situation from such completely different angles. It made communication so fraught, so _impossible_ , when to him, this was everything, and to Sanghyuk, it wasn’t anything at all.  
  
"I was hoping we could talk about it," Jaehwan said, softly.  
  
Sanghyuk started to laugh, the sound full of sadness, patronizingly so. "Talk? Now, when it’s too fucking late, you want to _talk_? We're done talking, Jaehwan. You blew your last chance. That's not why I'm here."  
  
"Then why are you here, love?"   
  
Sanghyuk sucked in a breath at the pet name, but let it slide. It gave Jaehwan a sad little thrill. "I'm here for the amulet, and I don't care if I have to give Kyungsoo a kidney to bribe him, but I won't let him make you another," Sanghyuk growled.   
  
Jaehwan was already shaking his head. "No. You can't have it," he said, and there was a note of pleading, of desperation, in his voice that he hated. "I'm just trying to protect you, Sanghyuk—"  
  
"No, you're not," Sanghyuk said, overriding him. "You're just trying to control me, own me, just like you've been doing since you seduced me, when I was barely eighteen. When I was young and stupid and didn't know any better. I was a _child_. Fuck, I wish I'd listened to Hakyeon.”  
  
That struck a nerve. “Don’t make it sound like I took advantage of you, you wanted it too.”  
  
“Just because I wanted it doesn’t mean you didn’t take advantage.” Sanghyuk shook his head and he looked so _sad_ and Jaehwan would feel guilty but he could see it in Sanghyuk’s eyes, could see that Sanghyuk wasn’t sad for himself, he was feeling sad for Jaehwan. Because Jaehwan had become nothing, nothing more than something to be pitied— pitied and loathed. “I don't expect you to see the line there, don't expect you to understand the damage you've done, because you don’t get it, you never have. You don’t understand, Jaehwan. You don’t understand anything. I'm not the same person I was before, you've torn me to pieces. And I'm done trying to make you see, to fix you, it's not my job." Jaehwan felt a lump rise into his throat, wondering how it had all gone so wrong, but he didn't get a chance to speak, because Sanghyuk was looking at Jaehwan levelly, the pity falling away and being replaced by something harder. "Now give me the goddamn amulet."  
  
"No," Jaehwan said, knowing this was going to get ugly, and not knowing how to stop it. How could he make Sanghyuk see that he was just trying to keep him safe, keep him alive, that this wasn't a game anymore. They’d been doing this for two years, and maybe that felt like a long time to Sanghyuk, but it felt like a blink to Jaehwan, like he’d taken his attention away for a moment and suddenly Sanghyuk wasn’t young anymore, wasn’t impressionable and sweet and kind, but instead was a tall, strong, capable hunter. And if he’d managed that transformation in two short years, what would he be like in another two? And then the two more after that, and then after that. He was a hunter— there wasn’t the normal human timeline here for Jaehwan to cling onto, wasn’t sixty odd years left, in which Sanghyuk would grow old. Sanghyuk could be dead in another two years. If he was lucky, he’d get another ten, before his job caught up to him and left him broken and bloodless on the ground one night. Was it any wonder that Jaehwan followed him, kept close enough to help.  
  
Sanghyuk strode forward, coming to stand within a breath of Jaehwan— he had become so tall, over the years, and Jaehwan had to look up slightly. Sanghyuk stared down at him, directly into his eyes, fearless and proud and _beautiful_. "I will not do this, anymore," Sanghyuk whispered, so angry he was surpassing screaming, "You _blew it_ , Jaehwan, I gave you so many chances. And now I will not have you lurking in the fringes of my life. I am ready to move on. You will go back to doing whatever the fuck you'd been doing in the three hundred years before you met me, and leave me free to do my fucking job, which I can't do if you're still following me around."  
  
"I can't stop," Jaehwan said, meaning it down to his bones. He couldn't. He could not stand idly by and wait for Sanghyuk to be killed. He couldn't survive it.  
  
"You mean you won't," Sanghyuk said, bitter, and he laughed, the sound like shattering glass. "Fuck, I'm never going to be rid of you, am I? The only way to escape you is in the fucking grave."  
  
Soft as the whisper of a butterfly's wings, Jaehwan murmured, "I'd follow you there, too." He looked at the collar of Sanghyuk's shirt, feeling low and weak. He'd sunk so far, and this was it. Everything was in pieces, ground to dust. There was nothing left to lose, anymore. He'd already lost it.  
  
Sanghyuk stepped back, frown turning bewildered. "What?"  
  
It had to be now, Jaehwan knew, and he felt like he was drowning, chest heaving. "I _love_ you, Sanghyuk," he choked out.   
  
Sanghyuk went very still at that. It wasn’t a vampire stillness, but it was more still than Jaehwan thought a human could achieve. But he could still see the erratic movement of his chest, the twitching of his fingers that he couldn’t control; he could still hear the constant beating of his heart. He seemed to have shocked Sanghyuk into complete silence. He stared at Jaehwan, mouth clamped shut, eyes wide.   
  
“Why can’t you see that.” Jaehwan's voice was thick with tears he wasn’t going to shed.   
  
Sanghyuk turned away from him, taking a few steps toward the door. He had his hands on his hips, head bowed, and the line of his shoulders, his back, tense. He seemed like he was trying to think of something to say. There were a lot of things he could say, could cut with, could throw back in Jaehwan’s face. And the thing was, Jaehwan already knew the reasons why, knew this was on his own shoulders, for years of being in denial, and acting like a bastard. But he’d imagined, he'd _hoped_ , that one day he’d be able to admit to it, to confess, like in all the fairytales, and it would _mean_ something.   
  
Eventually, Sanghyuk turned back to him, and said, in a quiet voice, “We’re not Hakyeon and Taekwoon, Jaehwan. We can’t have what they have.”  
  
Jaehwan shut his eyes, his emotions threatening to overwhelm him. How could Sanghyuk care so little about him, when he clearly knew Jaehwan too well. Because that was it, wasn’t it, that was part of what this was about. He looked at Taekwoon and Hakyeon and marvelled, constantly, at how could they have their relationship, as vampire and once-human, and have it work out so perfectly. He'd been repulsed by it before, but now he found himself craving it, yearning for it in his veins. To have what Taekwoon and Hakyeon had, but with Sanghyuk.  
  
Sanghyuk was speaking, his words shredding through Jaehwan's thoughts. “I’m not Hakyeon,” he said, and he was so casual about it, so matter of fact, that it was clear he had no idea how much every word was cutting into Jaehwan, “and you’re not Taekwoon. No matter how much you try to make it fit, it won’t. What we have is too different. It started off too violently, and has been too angry. Everything— it’s all been too broken for a happy ending, Jaehwan.”  
  
This couldn’t be happening. He'd— he'd said it, and— everything was still wrong. "I love you," Jaehwan repeated, eyes roving over Sanghyuk's impassive face. "I— I don't— it's why— why I follow you around, it's why— everything— I just— why can’t you just tell me you love me too—” Jaehwan said, so desperate he was almost begging, knowing he was pathetic, knowing he was a fucking fool—  
  
“Because I don’t love you,” Sanghyuk said bluntly.   
  
It took a moment, for the words to register, for the pain to follow, like when someone got a cut very fast, the blood and pain took a few beats to catch up. But then, then it came.   
  
Dying had hurt less than this.   
  
Sanghyuk was staring at him. And he felt sorry for Jaehwan, he could read it in his eyes, and Jaehwan looked away, looked at the floor. He heard Sanghyuk suck in a breath at that. “Leave,” Jaehwan whispered, arms wrapping tighter around himself. “The amulet is in my nightstand drawer. Take it and— please, leave.”  
  
“Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk said softly, but he went to the nightstand, plucking the amulet out of the drawer. He left after that, closing the door behind himself as softly as Jaehwan would have wanted him to have opened it at the start.


End file.
